Hellobee

A while back I shared the start of our journey with helmets for our twins to correct their overly flat heads. That was such a tough time – tough to decide to go through with the helmets, tough to power through with having them wear the helmets both while out and about and at home.

As I’d previously shared, the twins were “prescribed” the helmets for 8 weeks. About a month in, they noticed that Mr. Hop was showing above average improvement, while Miss Hop’s was also getting noticeably better, although not as quickly. They decided that Mr. Hop would likely be done after the 8 weeks was up, while they were leaning toward suggesting Miss Hop get an additional helmet (as she would have grown out of her helmet by the end of the 8 weeks, but they felt she would benefit from an additional helmet).

Mr. Hop & Miss Hop: happy babies with slightly rounder heads.

However, I have to share that we are…helmet drop outs. We made it about 5.5 weeks under the regime of having the babies wear the helmets 23 hours a day/7 days a week. We were doing awesome. But then teething fevers hit. And then the weather warmed up. Our babies were just HOT and fussy. Even though we dressed them for naps and overnight in short sleeved onesies and lightweight sleep sacks and kept the house cool, they were always sweaty little babies when we’d get them up!

So, after 5.5 weeks of consistently keeping them in helmets, we became more lax about not putting the helmets on them when they were sleeping or if they were outside in the heat. We saw significant improvement in their head shapes and felt that there was a balance between improving their head shape and their overall comfort.

And, while I wish we had the final scans to show so that I could share a comparison from start to finish…we never made it to the final appointment. The last appointment is when they do imaging of their heads, and with twins this takes at least 2 hours. As it is Mr. H’s busy season (he’s the one who was charged with taking them to their appointments), he made the decision to forgo the last appointment. I supported him in this decision – we were already pleased with the results and knew we would not be opting for any additional helmets.

The positives (now that we’re done):

• Both Mr. Hop and Miss Hop have rounder heads than when we started with the helmets.
• They never experienced any skin irritation or otherwise negative side effects (other than being hot).
• We were fortunate that these helmets were mostly covered by insurance and we didn’t have to fight for them to be covered.
• They had the helmets during the time where they were learning to sit independently, which meant extra padding when they would topple over!

The negatives (now that we’re done):

• Like I stated above, they cause your baby to be very hot! Mr. Hop has a lot of hair which caused him to be much hotter than Miss Hop.
• It is much harder to snuggle your baby when they’re wearing a helmet.

We are overall happy with our decision to go forward with these helmets, but I think it’s also important from the start to determine what your expectations are exactly. Apparently the specialist at the appointments would say that Miss Hop would need a second helmet if we wanted her head to be “perfectly round.” We weren’t aiming for our kids to have perfectly shaped heads; our goals were to help augment them enough so that there was some roundness in the back. Simple enough.

I wouldn’t change a thing but am also happy we got through this period of time. If this is something you’re facing, the time really does go quickly and if you’re lucky your little one won’t even notice that he or she is wearing a helmet!