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It can be hard to hear the words “helmet therapy” when it comes to your baby. The health and development of a baby are the top priority for parents everywhere, and they want to make sure that they are doing everything they can to help their baby.
This means making sure they are reaching milestones properly, that they are gaining weight as they should, and that they just look good. Parents are helped by pediatricians and other specialists who will also be checking in to make sure everything is on track.
It can make any parent nervous when they hear that something is wrong with their baby and that they need some kind of therapy. We commonly hear about speech therapy and physical therapy, but we seldom hear about helmet therapy.
It may not be uncommon to see a baby with a helmet on their head, and there is often a common misconception that these helmets are because their parents are overprotective, and want to prevent injuries from falls. However, education and information are the best way to educate, and we are going to go through everything there is to know about helmet therapy.
What Are The Helmets For?
Despite many thinking that helmets are for overprotective parents, they serve a much bigger purpose. According to Hopkins Medicine, helmet therapy is used when a baby’s head needs to be gently corrected. This means the shape. Since the time parents have been told to lay their babies on their backs to sleep, there has been an increase in babies with a “flat head.”
When babies are born, the bones in their skulls are not fused, and this means their head shape can be changed if they spend too much time laying on one side. It can happen to any baby, at any time. This condition can also be caused in utero, and it can usually be seen in multiples, as they did not have a lot of room in the womb.
It can also be caused by a medical condition called ‘craniosynostosis’ which is when the skull plates fuse too fast, and this requires surgical treatment and a helmet to correct the head shape. The earlier helmet therapy is started, the better the results will be.
How Helmets Work
According to Healthy Children, the helmets that babies wear are custom-made for their heads, and the process of correcting a head shape can be strenuous. Babies must wear the helmet for 23 hours of the day. When they take the helmet off for one hour, the helmet (and the baby’s head) needs to be washed to make sure there is no irritation from a dirty helmet.
What the helmet does is guide the head as it grows. When the baby goes through a growth spurt, the helmet will make sure that the growth happens where the head is flat. It will guide the growth in the way that it should be growing, and the result will be a round and perfect head.
This can take a few months to complete, but the earlier the helmet is placed on the baby, the quicker it will work. At one year old, the growth slows down substantially, which means it will take longer for the helmet to work.
How To Avoid Helmet Therapy
If a pregnant couple, or new mom and dad, is reading this, they may want to know what they can do to avoid their baby needing a helmet. Helmet therapy can be a long process, and it is not always cheap, so parents will want to try and avoid it.
According to The Every Mom, the best thing to do is to make sure that baby has a lot of tummy time. Tummy time helps baby work on their neck muscles so that they will be able to rotate their head while they are sleeping.
While they are sleeping, you can also move their head from time to time to make sure they are not spending a lot of time laying on one side. Have your doctor watch for conditions like Torticollis, as that is a major cause. Torticollis is a condition where the muscles in the neck don’t work as they should, and the baby literally cannot move its head.
The Shame With Helmets
There is a lot of shame when it comes to helmet therapy, and moms of babies with helmets have likely heard that they “didn’t hold their baby enough,” or that they are “lazy moms,” who put their baby in a swing too often. This is nothing more than shaming, and having a baby in a helmet is often never a result of something that mom/dad did, or didn’t do.
Sources: Hopkins Medicine, Healthy Children, The Every Mom
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