Well, we found out yesterday Andrew will need "the helmet".
...
Andrew was born through emergency c- section, but before that, during the "attempted" natural birth, the doctor had tried to vacume him out about 3 times. Due to this, his head came out looking, well quite pointed. About 2 months after Andrew was born, we started to notice his head shape had not exactly turned back to normal, and he also preferred to sleep with his head to the same side. Along with that, his head was starting to flatten on one side. At each doctor visit, we
discussed the flatness of Andrew's head. We did positional techniques to encourage him to turn his head and to take the pressure off the flatside of his head. At each doctors visit, Andrew's doctor told us that his head was not severe (only mild) and to just continue with the positional stuff.
By six months (7/5/10), Andrews's head was severely flattened (in our minds.) At Andrew's 6 month appointment, Andrews doctor finally recomended us to a physical therapist and "Cranial Repositioning" doctor in Orthodics at the Medowbrook building (Methodist Hospital where Andrew was born.)
We were not that excited to have Andrew get a helmet, but we knew it was probably needed. When we met with the theripist, she said that all the techniques we have tried were correct, and that there was nothing she could do. Some baby's with this problem develop something called tortilitis (or tightness of the neck) but Andrew did not seem to have that. That is also something we had already tried to do at home to try and prevent (so hopefully that is why he didnt end up with that proplem!). So basically from there we saw the Orthodics doctor at Meadowbrook on 7/26 where he did a full scan of Andrew's head, showed us the percentages of where his head is off from a normal baby's head, and recomended the helmet.
From the begining, we knew that getting the helmet covered by insurance was going to be a problem, but knew either way we would do whatever we needed to fix Andrews mishaped head, even if that meant we had to pay the $3,500 out of pocket.
So long story short we have officially decided to get the cranial repositioning helmet. Currently Phill is working with the insurance company and the doctors to try and get the helmet covered, but in the meantime we have an appointment on 8/5 to get the helmet fitted for Andrew. That is the day he will start his routine of having it on. It starts gradual to get him used to it, but then he is supposed to wear it 23 hours a day (Yes 23 our of 24!). It's not going to be fun, and the doc told us it would be about 4 months before we can retire the helmet.
I started this blog to look back at Andrew's journey with "the helmet".
