Journey so far (Hang in there, its long!)

I first noticed Ben's head looking quite flat when he was around 2 months old. At the time I wasn't really concerned as its quite common for young babies to have flat heads until they start to become more mobile.

A few weeks went by and is head didn't look any better. In fact, it looked worse. At this point I decided to have a look on the internet for some advice and things I could do to prevent Ben's head getting any flatter.

I started repositioning, (basically, just keeping Ben off the back of his head as much as possible) and bought a Babymoov pillow. The pillow is like a love heart shape with a little hole cut out if the middle so there is less pressure on the back of the head when babies are lay in there cot etc.

I was hoping that I would start to see an improvement but looking back I think I was just fooling myself that it wasn't that bad and that his head would get better. It doesn't help that other people were telling me that they couldn't notice it and that I was worrying over nothing!


Anyway, at the beginning of March I started looking at other options to help improve Ben's flatness. I came across a Sleepcurve mattress topper and found a few parents that had said they had worked wonders for their babies. (Some with Brachy and some with Plagio) The mattress topper sounded like the perfect thing to help Ben's head on it's way to a normal shape, so I decided that this would be my next purchase.


I had a look on the Sleepcurve website and for a brand new topper with sheets it was going to set me back around £100. I was gutted that they were so expensive, especially for just a mattress topper! Anyway, I decided to have a nosey on Ebay to see if I could find one any cheaper.


After a couple of days of umming and aaring, I bidded on a used topper with two sheets. I ended up getting it for £51, not bad really, half the price of a brand new one!


The topper arrived a couple of days later and put it on Ben's cot for him to sleep on that night. I was still using the Babymoov when he was in his car seat and out in his buggy, along with the repositioning and felt quite positive that I would start to see an improvement.


A couple of weeks went by (yawn!) and I was trying to convince myself that it was looking better, until I got him out of the bath. With his hair wet his head looked flat as a board. I was gutted. I felt so guilty and felt that I had caused it somehow. Surely there must be something I could do to fix it?


This is when I discovered helmet treatment. The helmet basically works by restricting growth to normal shaped areas of the head to allow the flattened area of the head to grow into a more rounded shape. I found three companies in the UK that specialise in this treatment and after looking into the treatment I found out that it was going to cost around £2000.

I decided to send a few photos of Ben's head to the three companies, Ossur, London Orthotics and Ahead4Babies. All three of them agreed that it looked like Ben had quite severe Brachycephaly, and it was unlikely to correct itself without treatment. I was a bit gutted really, but I suppose they were confirmed what I'd already guessed.

After discussing it with my OH Glyn, we decided to go ahead with getting Ben assessed at the Ossur PlagioCare centre in Leeds. As the assessment was free, we didn't have anything to loose really. I got Glyn to phone them, for some reason I didn't have the balls to phone them!
We were given an appointment for 25th March, a whole week of waiting. Argh!