Since the girls were born so early, their soft little heads developed some flat spots early on. Plus, both girls had Torticollis (tightness on one side of the neck) which resulted in them only wanting to look to the right. Thus, their little heads ended up resting on the same spot a lot. Poor little Rose had the worst flat spot. Both girls have been doing physical therapy since coming home from the NICU and the Torticollis has improved for both. We have also tried our hardest to make sure they are positioned in such a way that they will want to look to the left and we have tried moving their head position while they sleep. For some reason, Lili's head has gotten rounder over time while Rose's head has not really made any improvement despite lots of effort on our part. She was diagnosed with Plagiochephaly, which basically means she has an asymmetrical distortion of her skull. There is a flattening on the back/side of her head which has also caused one side of her forehead to protrude a bit. When viewed from the top down, her skull looks a little like a parallelogram. I took both girls to Primary Children's Rehabilitation to be checked out, and they measured the asymmetry of their skulls. Lili's was not very bad, but Rose was referred for an orthotic helmet. When we went to see the orthotist, he noted that he would consider Rose's flattening to be in the severe range. I was not very surprised, as I've been worried about it for a while. The orthotist confirmed that a helmet is recommended. I was glad to hear that the helmet does not "squish" her head back into shape. Sounds like it just restricts growth in the areas that are distorted and allows the flat spots to fill in. She will probably have to wear the helmet for three months. Maybe when she is all done I will post some before and after pictures.
This is Rose getting scanned for her helmet. They put a light cloth over her head to cover her hair because the scanner cannot read dark colors. There is an origin sensor placed on top of her head (the little black box in the picture) and then the orthotist scans her head all around with a thing that looks like a grocery store scanner gun.
Here is Rose wearing her helmet for the first time. She is a little uncertain at first.....
Shortly thereafter, there is no doubt about it......she hates it!
She will wear the helmet off and on for several days in order to work up to wearing it full time: 23 hours per day! The first two days have been pretty tough so far. It's going to be a long three months!
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