Helmets

When did your doctor recommend you get one for your baby and did it help? I think I finally convinced our pedi. My son def has a flat spot and at his 3 month appt she said just wait and it will heal on its own. Also, she said that helmets dont work. That the babies refuse to wear it. So, at their 6 month appt yesterday I brought it up again and asked for a second opinion. She said lets just wait till he is 9 months old and we will talk about it then. I told her I didnt think we should wait that long. She called me later on in the day and said after speaking with her collegues that she is going to refer me. Thoughts? Will it work if he is already 6 months old? I am so confused. We have HMO but will it still cost $2500???? I have Pacificare HMO. I dont want my baby to have a misshaped head all his life.

 

I do not PERSONALLY have an experience with the helmets, but my sister has two DDs (my nieces) who have had the helmet experience. This is quite interesting really.

With her first DD, they had her in a helmet by 3 months. My sister and DH lived in the "western" part of our state at the time, and they were served by the Brenners Childrens Hospital in Winston-Salem, NC.

With her second DD, they noticed by 3 months that she also had the flat spot problem and sought treatment. At that time, my sister and DH had moved to the "eastern" part of our state, and they were then served by Duke Medical Center/Hospital in Durham, NC. BUT, the specialists they saw said they were not going to treat the flat spot prob with a helmet. . . that it was UNNECESSARY and that they were going to use physical therapy instead.

Hmmm. Why one part of the state treated it one way and the other treated it the other way? Because the makers of the helmet were also located in closer proximity to the Brenners Childrens Hospital was what they were told.

Either way, both girls (treated differently) are fine and have no mishapened noggins four years plus after the fact. Both treatments seemed to have worked for them.

 

That is interesting. Also, I forgot to mention... we tried to take my son to physical therapy and the therapist said it was not necessary because he was moving his head fine to either side. She did however suggest that we look into helmets for him and if the doctor wouldnt do it to get a second opinion and go see a neosurgeon to write the prescription for the helmet. SO, I dont know. I would like to hear more stories...

 

There have been a few threads about this lately. I'll post a link to them. My little one just graduated from her helmet on Dec. 23rd. One of these links has before and after pictures. Let me know if you have any specific questions. I'm no expert but have gone through the process and would love to help you out. $2500 is cheap. Ours was $3300, $3600 if we wouldn't have paid it all up front!

http://www.twinstuff.com/forum/index.php?s...=108593&hl=

http://www.twinstuff.com/forum/index.php?s...=108606&hl=

 

I personally think helmets are only needed in severe cases. I think that why Dr's always say don't worry about it because they probably have seen so many case that have gotten better on their own. If you want to spend the money and have piece of mind then do it but I'm guessing it would most likely get better on it's own.
My Dd had a flat head and now has a perfectly round head. My twins both had pretty severe bradyocephaly. I took them to physio on my request and they suggested helmets and of course the helmet place said they needed them but I decided to wait a little longer at this point I don't think I will be getting them anymore.

Here is some pictures of before

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh268/blended6/010-1.jpg

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh268/blended6/0812.jpg

And now 4 months later

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh268/blended6/401.jpg

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh268/blended6/359.jpg

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh268/blended6/416.jpg

 

I tend to partially agree with you Christy. Helmet places are of course going to push the need for a helmet. And there are obviously cases where the head shape will get better on it's own. But what if it doesn't and you've waited so long that it takes that much longer to correct the head shape? Heck, we have a daughter that will most likely never have a shaved head to see the shape of it. But if we didn't correct it she would have continued to have a very wide head and a lower left ear and that's noticable. Your boys did have pretty bad flat spots but they now have hair so you wouldn't be able to see it anyway. They are cuties! We definitely went with peace of mind when decided whether or not to put a helmet on our DD. If DD were a DS, there would be no question whether or not we would have fixed it. But I think my DH is still bitter that his parents never fixed his ears and that played a bit into our decision making as well. LOL! He didn't want Mallory to be bitter about her head shape and something we could have easily had fixed. :lol:

 

I don't thik it's bad thing for parents to want to use helmets to insure their baby will have a nicely shaped head, I just don't want people to feel pressured into it when a lot of the time it will be fine on it's own. It would be a big financial burden on us to come up with the money but if I felt like it was necessary I would have. I have been watching their heads closely and since I've been seeing improvement every month they started sleepig on their tummys and sitting/crawling etc. I feel like it would be a waste of money and a lot of hassle for us.

Oh and they had hair before and it was very noticable still. We shaved them at 3.5 months because of their crazy bald spots
Here is a pic of one in the bath. You can see a clear improvement.

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh268/blended6/186.jpg

 

Both my boys had helmets. Our ped noticed it right away so at the 4 month appointment she referred them to a specialist. They also didnt have torticollis because they were moving their head both ways just fine. The doc said the best time to do it is between 4-6 months, I think because they handle them better the younger they are. They got theirs when they were 5 months. My boys had NO trouble with them at all. They really didnt even notice or fuss when wearing them. If you are going to do it I wouldnt wait much longer, but I really think it will be just fine even if they are six months. It is considered plastice surgury because there is no harm to their developing brain, so some insurance may not cover it. Jackson only had his for 2 months, Logan is still in his and hopefully will be out in another week or 2. And they don't wear them all the time. You start out having them wear it for an hour on, hour off and work up to 4 hours on, 1/2 hour off and all night. I personally am really glad we decided to do it, there heads look great now and some babys just dont grow out of having a flat spot. It's really up to you but we have had a good experince with it!