My first born is now 6. He is a creative, inquisitive, and active little boy.
Whoever said the days are long, but the years are short totally GOT IT!!
He’s grown so much and even hit some big milestones lately- like finishing preschool and becoming an official Kindergartener!!
Yet, I want to rewind a bit.
I recently shared some of my sweet Maggie Jane’s story after her birthday, so I thought it fitting to now share some of Asher’s.
This is Asher’s DOC Band story.
At Asher’s 4-month appointment, we asked the Pediatrician about the shape of his head. We knew it didn’t look quite right- not an easy thing for any parent to admit. She referred us to a cranial specialist (Cranial Technologies) down at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. We had him evaluated and we learned he had both Plagiocephaly and Brachycephay. (I’ll explain both below.)
If we decided to go with the cranial DOC Band, it would work to reshape his head.
I was a mess; sitting in the office and trying not to cry. And at the same time trying to absorb all we were being told. Looking back, I think my emotions were mostly selfish. Thoughts such as, “People will think I’m a bad mother”, “What did I do to cause this?” and “Should we have let him sleep on his back?” ran through my mind. (I did get over this as we moved forward, but just being honest.)
Over the next couple of weeks I learned more through some of my own research and I asked more questions. There are a number of websites with information and blogs out there from other parents going through the same scenario. Our family was definitely not alone!!
Here is some of what I learned:
With Plagiocephaly, the back of the head is somewhat angled or lopsided. I was told that in our case this most likely happened “in utero”. Asher got stuck with his head to the side on my pelvic bone and I ended up having to have a C-section. It also may have happened even before that when he “dropped” in the womb.
Along with that he had Brachycephaly, which is the flattening of the back of the head and the widening of the head overall. Some of this was caused by sleeping on his back and the fact that he was a good night sleeper. Yet his head was also a bit predisposed to this shape; we could feel slight bone protrusions above each of his ears, which shouldn’t have been there.
Asher was and is totally fine- praise God!! And in his case, as his head was predisposed to its shape, there’s not much we could have done to change things. And yes, Brandon and I would have still had him sleep on his back until he could roll on his own. It worked with him and why mess with a good sleeper. Heck, he was probably “fine” even if we had decided not to continue with the cranial band process. (Yet there could be some referred health problems specifically for him if left untreated.) I’m thankful we caught it early and he doesn’t remember anything about having to wear it.
Here are some highlights on how things went:
- He was in the band for 10 weeks.
- He had to wear the band for 23 hours a day.
- We had to go back for an appointment each week until he was 6 months and then extended to every 2 weeks. The foam inside the band was scraped away at each appointment as he grew. It was a lot of time down at the hospital guys, not gonna lie.
My goal was to make this as positive of an experience as possible for him. (And for me.) We have tons of cute pictures of him is his band, and he loves looking back at them. We actually even still have the band and we’ve talked about it giving him his amazingly round head!!
I am obviously not a doctor and not an expert. But I do know that as the parent, you are the best advocate for your child and know what’s best for him/her. I wrote this mostly as therapy for me, but also to help anyone else I possibly could through our experience. Whether you have to face this with your child or not, and whether you go the DOC Band route or not, fight for your child and go with your parent “gut”. And reach out if you have any questions or want to share your DOC story with me. I’d love to connect!
Embrace Life