Nico is our second baby. He was born March 10th, 2021. We started to notice Nico was favoring sleeping with his head to one side. No matter how many times we turned his head to the other side he would immediately go back to his favored position. At around 4 months we noticed his head was becoming misshapen. We brought this up with our doctor and she suggested we go to Physio. We went to physio over the course of four months to try different methods to fix this issue while Nico was still sleeping on his back. We went to Kids Physio Group (Fraser & North Vancouver locations) They were great! We learned different stretches and exercises to do at home to help Nico sleep on the other side. Nico had a tight neck which made him sleep to one side all the time. I have been told this is very common with bigger babies (Nico is huge! He's in the 95% for weight for babies) Some things you can do to prevent a flat spot on your babies head are:
1. Turning the babies head to ensure even time and pressure on each side - We tried, but he had a very tight neck muscle which made this extremely difficult.
2. Baby wearing (less time with baby's head resting on the backside) - If you want recommendations for baby wraps let me know!!
After seeing the physio, It was suggested we go get a free assessment from the Rokband Head Shape Clinic in New Westminster. This way we could determine how severe Nico's head shape was and if we wanted to move forward with treatment.
At 8 months we took Nico for his initial scan. He was in the moderate-severe category for his head shape. We took some time to digest this information, and decided we would like to move forward with treatment. The majority of the treatment was covered by our extended medical plan. Once you decide you would like to go ahead with treatment, you have to get a scan of baby's head and order the helmet within the same week (since babies heads grow SO FAST!!) The staff at Rokband Head Shape Clinic were so helpful, informative and welcoming of our family into the clinic. They are quick to respond to any questions and very helpful during the entire process.
Nico's first day wearing his helmet was Nov 23rd, 2021. He barely noticed he had anything on his head and was such a trooper. He was great with it on and wore it (almost) full-time until Christmas. When you start wearing the helmet, you work up to wearing it 23+ hours a day, which we did! He ate in it, slept in it, played in it. (Just can't swim or shower with it on) So we took it off for bath and swimming and that was his break from it for the day. He grew out of the first helmet, and we got our one replacement helmet in the new year. We got "JOFA" written on the second one (Do you get this hockey reference?) We had follow up appointments about every three weeks or so to check Nico's improvement. On February 24th Nico graduated and we said goodbye to the helmet.
I am so impressed with the results of Nico's head shape journey. We went from moderate-severe to all normal ranges for his head and we could not be happier. Thank you Rokband!!
If you have questions about baby head shape or Rokband visit: www.rokbandclinics.ca, leave a comment or you can send me an email at kiraleighgall@gmail.com
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