There is Life After The Helmet!

Maycie had her 6 week appointment with the plastic surgeon today! It was a good appointment! She no longer need to wear it. It isn't perfect (but who has a perfect head?!) but he feels any more changing that needs to take place will happen naturally!

I came home and was met by my other kids and when they saw her without the helmet they first asked to make sure and then let out quite the yell! It was so cute! My oldest son is just getting ready to play football so we joked that we were trading Maycie's busy helmet season for Jaxon's busy helmet season! So we put the helmet back on and took our last pictures in the helmet! I also took some after pictures for myself. I thought it might be kind of fun to see some before and after shots. Another reminder that what we have done and been through is totally worth it! I can't imagine where we would be if we had decided not to do this.

This is Maycie at our first appointment at Fit Well.

She was about 5 months old.

This is Maycie now! After 5 months and 2 helmets what a difference!

The first helmet put too much pressure on the back of her head. (I think her head shape changed between when they did the mold and when we got the helmet so then it put too much pressure and caused an infection. But that is just my thinking!) This is a picture at it's worst! This is why we needed a 2nd helmet. They allowed room for the bump on the back of her head and then put the padding in so the pressure still had some give to it!

This is the back of her head now! I should have taken it from the side! But you can't even tell anymore! The plastic surgeon was telling the intern (I think it was an intern!) with him today about the bump on the back of her head because they wondered why we were so excited over the back of her head!

Everything looks so much better it is almost hard for me to believe! It has been a long road. I will not deny that. This has been the last 6 months of my life and almost 2/3 of hers! We are still doing physical therapy. I am hoping we will see a drastic improvement there now that the helmet is off. I will go and do until we are done. I don't want to give up and then have her regress. Besides that therapy hasn't been bad! They are more like a friend then anything else!

Thank you to everyone for visiting and your comments! I think I am going to add a new gadget so we can "converse" a little easier! If anyone else has wisdom ideas for decorating the helmets anything else they would like to share I would be glad to do a post with your insights. Please e-mail them to me at the address on the right! Also is there anything specific that I should be blogging about? Keep the comments coming! I need your help to know if this blog is helping! Thank you!

Make it Yours!

We have had so many comments on Maycie's helmet! I knew one of the things that would be hard for me with the helmet was no bows and cute stuff. I talked to a friend who makes bows to help me figure out how to put bows on the helmet. She was amazing and came up with Velcro! Don't you just love Velcro! We put the soft side on the bows so they wouldn't stick together. That way you can have a bow for every outfit just like "normal!" The other thing we did was vinyl flowers! We have gotten lot's of great comments about those too! I can't take credit for those either, my sister totally took care of them! But what I learned with the flowers is that you can do anything with vinyl! And it holds up really well to the heat they have to use to adjust the helmets. We were in for a check today and one of the flowers was in the way so he needed to take it off. He was way surprised in the trouble he had getting it off! I have talked with people who for boys have made them into "football helmets" for their favorite team! So the vinyl is good for more then just being able to do what you want it will really stand up to what you have to put the helmets through too! So I say make it yours! I would have had a bow in Maycie's hair everyday so I found a way to put a bow on her helmet! When I told someone we were going to put the flowers on they told me not to. They said it would draw attention to the helmet. I figure, it's a helmet, people are going to notice! I might as well make it cute! And for the outfits I didn't have a bow for it was still cute! And I think doing fun things makes it easier for people to talk to you about it. And for me I would rather people ask me about it then just look at my baby like there is something wrong with her. I would love to hear all the fun things you have thought of to make your baby's helmet personalized and unique!