Fixin' her Noggin

This post is a little hard for me to write, but really it shouldn't be! We did something to help our daughter, and what parent wouldn't? It was definitely hard to hear that there was something "not right" with our baby's head but it sounds way worse than it is. I'll share our story and what I think about the Doc Band and hopefully it helps parents out there who are on the fence about it.

So, Olivia had plagiocephaly (a.k.a. flat head syndrome) that I think may have started when she was still in my womb! We noticed pretty early on that her head was a bit flat in the back and over time it just became more obvious. At her 4-month check-up, the doctor gave us the information for the Doc Band but told us to give her more tummy time and less time on her back and see if it gets better by the 6-month appointment. At 6 months, there wasn't much improvement so we decided to move forward with the Doc Band. It isn't something that's 100% necessary--she will grow up to be a normal person with a slightly flat head but we thought that there are so many advancements these days, so why not fix it while she's young enough to not even remember it?

It's actually pretty incredible how the Doc Band works. They take 3-D pictures of the baby's head and create a mold from them. Then a band is made from the mold and fits the baby's head perfectly. Every 2 weeks, the band gets adjusted depending on how the head is growing so that it puts pressure on the areas where the head needs to fill in--all safe, with no pain, and no danger, I promise! They estimated that she would need to wear it for 12-14 weeks and she got it off in only 9! Her head grew quickly into all the right places and it cut down her time significantly

We're so happy with the results and we're so glad we did it. It was 20x harder on us than it was for her. Olivia is a trooper and had no problems with wearing it at all! It definitely helped that we got her helmet painted by our good friends at Lustratype. The strangers' stares went from "aww poor baby" to "whoa that's a cute helmet!". She got tons of compliments on it.

If you have any questions about it, please feel free to leave a comment with your e-mail and I'll be happy happy to answer with my honest opinion right back!