The Martin Bunch: Pink bubble-gum astronaut pumpkin football player

Ethan pointed out to me awhile back that I never did explain on my blog about why Olivia had a helmet between October & December of 2010. So here it goes:

We all know that babies who are born vaginally tend to have elongated skulls, which usually is rounded out in the first couple months. We noticed that the shape of Olivia's head was taking awhile to round out. At the same time, we noticed that she would always fall asleep with her chin tucked down towards her neck on her left side, which explained the flat spot that was forming on the back of her head. When she was about three months old, we decided to take her to the pediatrician to check it out.

The doctor diagnosed Olivia with torticollis, which is a damaged neck muscle either from trauma during delivery or from her placement in-utero. When babies are so young, they don't have much control over their neck muscles, so her neck would always sit in a way which comforted her muscle the most. At the doctor's appointment, you could feel the knot on her muscle formed on the side of her neck that was injured. Olivia screamed in pain as the doctor poked around. If you imagine a sore muscle you get from either lifting weights or running, which you never stretch out and heal from, you tend to move your body in ways that would less irritate it. And that's what Olivia did. Her damaged neck muscle limited her neck movement and caused her to have "flat head" syndrome from only laying in a single position on her back, also known as plagiocephaly.

Torticollis left untreated not only can cause a flat spot, but also facial deformities, so we were definitely interested in all ways to treat her condition. The doctor recommended some stretches to do with Olivia at every diaper change. So how did this work? You guessed it; Olivia hated every minute of it, and I think I had a piece of my heart torn out every time I had to stand there and make her cry like that.

I did research on tort online, and found that we should look into pediatric physical therapy. I told my doctor that the stretches she had shown me wasn't working, so I was able to convince her to write a "prescription" to see a therapist. Easier said than done. After a long round-about with Kelsey-Seybold and the insurance, we finally switched to a new pediatrician and was able to get Olivia into therapy at TEAM Approach Pediatric Therapy not too far from our house.

The therapists at TEAM Approach were nothing less than awesome. Torticollis is very common, and many diagnosis go unnoticed depending on how how the neck muscle is damaged. In fact, our therapist was seeing two other patients at the same time. She showed us ways to hold Olivia (football cradle and against our chest) that would stretch out her muscle and maker her feel comforted at the same time. I wish we had taken some pictures of her stretching. Thanks be to God, in less than 2 months of weekly visits to the therapists and stretching at home, Olivia's torticollis was cured. But, we still needed to get the flat spot on her head examined.

Now, it had been about 2-3 months since her initial tort diagnosis. Our new pediatrician recommended that we visit a pediatric neuro-surgeon down in the Med Center. Hearing the words "neuro" or "surgeon" in any situation makes me cringe. But, we knew what to expect: the neuro-surgeon was going to examine to see if Olivia's flat spot would ever round out. By the end of the visit, the surgeon recommended that Olivia would benefit from having a helmet, but did not require it. After much thought and praying, we decided to get her fitted for one. We thought that it would be better that we get it done now when she's so young, and not regret doing it later when it would be too late.

The surgeon wrote us a prescription to have a helmet made at TMC Orthotics. After months of going to many doctors appointments and therapy sessions, I just prayed that the entire process with reshaping Olivia's head with a helmet would go smoothly. At the first appointment, they scanned the shape of Olivia's head with a 3-D transmitter. They essentially put a pantyhose on her head with the transmitter at the top. The orthotist used a hand held scanner to provide a topographical image needed to shape the inside of her helmet. With those measurements in place, we came back in one week to have her fitted. They provided us with a schedule that would allow Olivia to break into her new "accessory" and wear it it 23 hours a day. The first week we worked from wearing it 3 hours to 10 hours a day. After one week, she would start wearing it to sleep at night. That morning, Olivia woke up with a bruise on her face that really had me disheartened. That's when I started to feel a little regret with making this decision to have her in a helmet. But, she never bruised again, because we visited our orthotist every week, and he was able to adjust the inner styrofoam of the helmet based on the growth and rounding out of her head slowly over time. Actually, you could see positive results after only two weeks with the helmet! I began to be relieved. We loved our orthotist, Stoney. He was always so sweet to Olivia and comforting to me.

Stoney recommended that Olivia only needed to be in her helmet three months. I have to say, that she was REALLY a cute baby with the helmet! When out in public, I caught people staring with perplexed looks, probably wondering, "head injury?! What a careless mom!!" One time, a mom came up to me and told me her daughter had just gotten out of her helmet and had a wonderful experience. At church, kids walking by her nursery room would call her a robot baby, ha! We were right in the middle of NFL football season, so we taught her how to raise her arms up and say "touchdown" with her pink helmet. Halloween passed, and we dressed her up as a pink bubble-gum astronaut pumpkin.

Surprisingly, after only two months, Olivia was free from her helmet. Just in time for Christmas!! Stoney said that she was simply outgrowing the helmet. Looking back, my emotions were every where. Olivia's head is not perfectly round, but it's SO MUCH better than it used to be. With our next baby, we will perform the stretches no matter what so that we can avoid all of this. Here are some pictures from our experience. Most were taken from my cell phone camera, so the quality isn't that great.