A Guest Post: Surviving Plagiocephaly and Brachycephaly

A few months ago, I was contacted by the team who works for Sarah over at the Baby Flat Head Syndrome website... they had run across Hunter's journey with his DocBand and asked me to write a guest post in order to help them raise awareness for Plagiocephaly, Brachycephaly, and other forms of 'flat head syndrome' in infants.

Sarah is doing an amazing job at raising awareness for what she calls 'baby flat head syndrome'... and if you know us at all, you'll remember our own 'baby flat head'...

Remember him??

I barely do!

Sarah's biggest goal is to decrease the number of infants who have to be treated with bands by providing new parents with all of the information they need about the importance of tummy time, new pillows that help decrease the chances of 'flat heads', and by describing in amazing detail exactly how bone structures change when a baby's head starts to flatten... like our sweet boy's did; 

I was so honored that she asked me to help her with such an important cause and with something that is so close to my own heart!

Head over to Sarah's blog to read Hunter's story and be sure to leave her some love, too... and if you know anyone who is expecting a baby or who has an infant, please click 'share' and help Sarah raise awareness!

Sarah~ Thank you so much for all you're doing for this generation of precious babies... and thank you for the opportunity to share our own story that is so close to my heart!

Happy Graduation, Sweet Boy!

Friends, we have had SUCH a great week!!

Hunter's DocBand graduation could not have been better..... this boy's head looks amazing :-)

We took one last DocBand photo before his last set of digital images was taken...

(Ready for his pictures!)

Are you ready?!?!?

Before....

After.....



CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?!?!?!

Daddy was even able to make it to graduation and he got the very first round-headed snuggles....

Hunter received his DocBand diploma and we will proudly display this symbol of his growth and development with his Apnea certificate!

AND.... to celebrate this special day, we had a fun dinner at Outback (Hannah's favorite restaurant ;-)) with Tata (my daddy)....

And then we headed over to Build A Bear so we could make a special friend who can wear Hunter's DocBand forever...

And Sis got a special friend, too of course....



She bathed them...

And she named them.... Rapunzel Hannah Smith and DocBand Monkey Smith ;-)



YAY!!!! I DID IT!!!!

** I have a few great posts coming up..... a HUGE prayer request for a friend, a HUGE prayer request for Hunter, and another HUGE milestone to share ;-) **

Goodbye Plagiocephaly and Brachycephaly!!

Tomorrow is a BIG day for our little guy!!

Because Hunter was in the NICU for so long, and because he laid on his back for so long, and since it takes preemies a little longer to hit milestones such as sitting and rolling over, Hunter ended up having Plagiocephaly and Brachycephaly that developed over the first couple of months after he came home.

In short.... he had a flat and wide head.

;-)

When Hunter was first measured for his DocBand, we were told that he would wear it for 12-14 weeks.....

(He wasn't too thrilled about the DocBand fitting process....)

The standard DocBand is plain white and well, it felt and looked way too medical and harsh for such a handsome boy....

So I had it painted.....

MUCH better!!

(Disclaimer... Joey was not completely involved in the designing process; boys get to be all sports and dirt for their entire lives so I took the only opportunity I might ever have to claim my Mama's Boy ;-))

Hunter and his sweet friend, Jennings overlapped on their DocBand treatment! I just LOVE these sweet heads....

Hunter wears his band 23 hours a day and is supposed to get a one hour break per day so we can bathe him and clean his band.... we don't have the most tolerable patient ever so he actually wears it 24 hours a day and we clean him and his band every other or every 2 days. Gross, I know.... and even though their heads get super stinky, it's better this way... trust me ;-) 



As of tomorrow, Hunter has had his band for only 8 weeks...

And tomorrow he will GRADUATE!! 

Such a quick DocBand treatment is very telling of how quickly and how well our sweet boy is growing.... and that is the very best news out of it all ;-)

Tomorrow we will say 'goodbye' to Hunter's DocBand and will say 'HELLO!' to his perfectly round, sweet-smelling head!  

It is very difficult to snuggle with a DocBand-ed baby and I simply CANNOT WAIT to snuggle his new head....

And I'll post pics of it as soon as I can!

AND... We'll be posting one prayer request later this week.... it might seem small to everyone else, but to us it's huge... and we just know it will end with one more miracle ;-)

** We firmly believe that there is nothing we could have done to avoid Hunter's Plagiocephaly and Brachycephaly, due to ALL of the factors that played into his first months of life! BUT.... though we have always known that Tummy Time is important for infants, I'm not quite sure we ever knew exactly WHY it was so important. Now we know....

I know it's annoying when doctors emphasize something that most babies aren't too thrilled about.... but please, if you have a young baby, don't skip Tummy Time!**