Being a mom is hard. You try your best to keep your baby fed, clothed, and safe so they grow into perfect children, teenagers, and adults.
So, imagine my reaction when my tiny three-month-old daughter’s pediatrician told me she had a flat spot on her head caused by me.
Well, he didn’t say I’d caused it, but it’s definitely what I heard.
What her pediatrician actually said was that my daughter had a flat spot on her head that could’ve been caused by several things:
- Her position in utero,
- The position she has her head in when she sleeps,
- Or because she doesn’t spend enough time on her tummy.
I only heard one of the reasons…
She doesn’t spend enough time on her tummy.
Any experienced mom without postpartum depression would’ve taken in that information and thought, “I have to do more tummy time with my daughter.”
But what I (a first-time mom who had just transitioned her daughter to drinking exclusively formula, and who had terrible postpartum depression because of it) thought was, “Here’s another way I’m failing my daughter.”
Cue the violin music, and dunk me in a steamy pool of mom guilt.
The pediatrician recommended that we try re-positioning her head by putting a wedge under her body, so her head naturally leans in the opposite direction, and to switch sides each day. It was possible that just re-positioning her would round out her head. But if it didn’t work, she’d probably need an expensive helmet to round out her head.
My mission was clear: Re-position the baby to avoid that helmet.
For months, I agonized about the idea of my tiny baby girl wearing some big clunky helmet. There was no way I was going to let that happen!
So, my husband and I were diligent about re-positioning her, and by her sixth month appointment, her head had completely rounded out, and we were over the moon!
Maybe we weren’t such bad parents after all.
While I was doing the whole stay-at-home mom thing, I started blogging and following a lot of accounts that I found interesting.
I can’t remember exactly how I landed on this Instagram account, but it sold cranial reshaping helmet decals. Her customers were so cute with their decorated helmets, and their smiles were so pure that I realized that it didn’t matter whether they needed the helmets or not, they were still as happy and cute as ever.
I spoke to the owner of the Instagram account about how my daughter had almost needed a helmet, and how we were able to round out her head. She congratulated me on how lucky we were that re-positioning had worked for us, but that she had tried everything to round out her daughter’s head, and nothing worked except for the helmet and that’s why she started making the decals.
I felt her pain so much, she thought that she’d done something to mess up her daughter too! She only felt better after her daughter was out of the helmet, and she began making other babies’ decals. Hearing their parents’ journeys made her realize that some kids, no matter what you try, will need to have a cranial reshaping helmet to round out their heads.
That day, my perspective totally shifted.
Perhaps if the re-positioning hadn’t worked, my daughter might’ve needed a helmet too, and I would have been totally traumatized by it, all because of the way I had viewed the whole situation. But, thanks to that small shop owner, I began to admire the parents of those gorgeous children for making an investment in their children’s soon-to-be round heads, and even thought how the lovingly decorated helmets made their babies look even cuter.
I remember telling her that I would keep her in mind in case my second baby needed a helmet, but I wasn’t ready to have another baby any time soon, so, of course, a year later, I was pregnant with my second baby.
Luke was born in October 2018, and when he was four months old, we found out he needed a cranial reshaping helmet.
This time I was mentally prepared.
We’d tried the least invasive, and most inexpensive, repositioning treatment that had worked so well on my daughter, but it didn’t work in rounding out Luke’s little coconut. (I call his noggin a coconut because he has such little hair that his head looks like one. I mean, just look at that little coconut.)
Right after I found out he needed the helmet, I let my Instagram, helmet-decal-designing friend know that my coconut needed a helmet, and, without skipping a beat, she asked me what I wanted. I told her my ideas for the decals, and she made it happen!
Look at his coconut all decked out in custom-made decals and cute as ever! I couldn’t have been any happier with the result!
She also sent us some goodies for his helmet graduation day! I remember opening the package and thinking, “It’s a little early for her to be sending all this graduation stuff. He just got the helmet.”
But those four months he was in the helmet just flew by.
I’m not going to say it was easy, because it did have its challenges – specifically:
- Applying the decals and keeping them from falling off (Anyone need some leftover Mod Podge?),
- Deciding when he should or shouldn’t wear it (He had to wear it 23 hours a day, but he couldn’t sweat in it. Hello! Do you know how hot it gets in Florida, helmet makers? Of course the kid is going to sweat! So the helmet calculus was difficult to figure out, and our family outings were mostly indoor activities during that time.),
- And keeping it from getting stinky (Fresh Wave and Royal Violets were lifesavers!).
But now that he’s graduated, I miss the helmet, not because of how cute Luke looked it in, but because we had made it part of our routine. I was investing so much TLC into his helmet and him and I know he does too because he no longer has the helmet to protect him from bumping his coconut on everything.
The most valuable lesson I learned from my cranial reshaping helmet journey is that the helmet isn’t the end of the world, it’s an investment in my child’s future.
Have a great one, lovely!
Xo,
