Why Do Babies Wear Helmets? A Letter To My Freaking Out Past Self

Dear Sarah from exactly six months ago,

You're currently sitting cross-legged on the dusty attic floor. You're wearing Dave's old college hoodie that smells intensely of damp cardboard, and you're literally crying into a plastic storage bin of Leo's outgrown baby clothes. Maya is downstairs yelling something about wanting a cheese stick, but you're ignoring her because you just found it. His old cranial helmet.

The blue one. With the little aviator goggles I had custom-painted on the sides to make it look less like a medical device and more like a cute accessory.

You're holding it like Yorick's skull in a Shakespeare play and just absolutely sobbing, because holding this tiny, sweat-stained piece of foam and plastic suddenly brought back the overwhelming, suffocating panic of those early days. I remember how much time you spent furiously Googling why do babies wear helmets at 3 AM while your coffee went cold in the microwave for the fourth time that morning. I was typing so fast and crying so hard that my search history was just a mess of typos like babi flat head and will my kid be okay.

I just wanted my sweet little babie to be okay, you know?

Before Leo, I used to see other babies wear these little hard hats at the park or the grocery store, and I honestly just thought they had really intensely overprotective parents. Like, oh, they must be learning to walk and their mom is just terrified of table corners. I had absolutely no idea it was a medical thing until I was the mom sitting on the crinkly paper of the doctor's exam table, hyperventilating.

That long P-word my doctor said

So, Dr. Miller—our doctor who always looks like he desperately needs a nap and a strong espresso—told me it's called positional plagiocephaly. Which sounds terrifying. I literally thought he was diagnosing my four-month-old with some kind of prehistoric dinosaur disease. But he sighed, drew this very wobbly circle on the exam table paper, and tried to explain that baby skulls are like soft tectonic plates floating around.

Something about their brains growing like 75% by age two? I don't really know, my brain was short-circuiting, but basically, he said their heads are super moldable so they can fit through the birth canal, and because they grow so fast, if they lay in one spot too long, that spot gets flat. It's just a flat head.

I guess back in the 90s, when our parents were raising us, babies just slept on their stomachs and had perfectly round, bowling-ball heads. But then the whole "Back to Sleep" campaign happened in 1992. Which, thank god, obviously, because it basically slashed SIDS rates in half. But it also meant a whole generation of infants suddenly sleeping on their backs for hours and hours until their soft little skulls flattened out like pancakes. So yeah, we save them from the really bad stuff, but we get flat heads in return. Fair trade, I guess. Anyway, the point is, it’s super common now.

Dr. Miller also mumbled something about craniosynostosis where the skull bones actually fuse together too early and you need real surgery, but honestly I just totally blocked that out because I was already spiraling into a pit of mom-guilt.

The torticollis nightmare that took over my life

Of course, Leo didn't just have a flat head. He also had torticollis. Which is just a very fancy, expensive-sounding medical term for tight neck muscles.

Basically, his neck was tight on the right side, so he constantly favored looking to the left. ALWAYS the left. If a marching band came through the right side of our living room, he wouldn't even blink, but if a dust bunny floated by on the left, he was locked in. Because he always laid with his head turned left, that side of his skull got super flat, and it started pushing his left ear forward.

You guys, I spent three solid months doing these physical therapy stretches that felt like I was wrestling a baby alligator. I was constantly waving expensive wooden rattles on his right side looking like a deranged, heavily caffeinated orchestra conductor. Look right, Leo! Look at the pretty wooden ring! LOOK RIGHT OR YOUR HEAD WILL BE A TRAPEZOID!

It was hell. Just, pure exhausting hell.

I felt so incredibly guilty. Like, how did I not notice he only looked left? Was I looking at my phone too much while nursing him? Did I leave him in the baby swing too long so I could finally take a shower that didn't involve me standing in cold water while rushing?

Instead of frantically throwing out every single baby bouncer in your house and crying uncontrollably while you force your screaming infant into three unbroken hours of tummy time because you think you ruined their head forever, just try to take a deep breath and maybe lay them on your chest on the couch while you watch Netflix.

The sweaty, stinky reality of 23 hours a day

When we finally got the helmet, they told me he had to wear it for 23 hours a day.

TWENTY. THREE. HOURS.

You get exactly one hour a day to take it off, give them a bath, and violently scrub the inside of the helmet with rubbing alcohol. Because let me tell you something no one warns you about: the smell. Oh god, the smell. A baby wearing a foam-lined plastic shell on their head for 23 hours a day smells exactly like a high school hockey locker room mixed with sour milk and old cheese.

It's so gross. So much sweat. Everywhere.

Because he was basically wearing a winter hat indoors during the middle of July, his little head was constantly sweating, which meant his whole body was overheating. I honestly think Leo would have spontaneously combusted if I hadn't found the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit from Kianao.

This sleeveless onesie became my absolute holy grail. I bought six of them in different colors. Because it's 95% organic cotton, the natural fibers were literally the only thing that kept him from turning into a slippery, rashy mess under all that medical gear. I mean, I know it's just a bodysuit, but it actually breathed. And the envelope shoulders were a godsend because when he inevitably had a massive blowout, I could pull the dirty onesie down over his body instead of trying to drag poop-covered fabric over his giant plastic helmet.

If you've a baby in a helmet right now, or just a really sweaty baby in general, seriously, go look at their organic baby clothes collection. It saved my sanity.

Overcompensating at the country club

Because I felt so intensely guilty about the helmet—like I had somehow failed him as a mother—I started massively overcompensating with his outfits. I wanted people to look at him and think, Wow, what a stylish baby, instead of, Wow, what happened to his head?

So, in a sleep-deprived haze, I bought him these Baby Sneakers. I'll be totally honest with you here—they're ridiculously cute. They look like tiny little boat shoes. But Leo was six months old. He wasn't walking. He wasn't even crawling. He was literally a potato baby.

Dave took one look at him sitting in his stroller, wearing a cranial helmet and tiny boat shoes, and asked why our infant looked like a miniature stockbroker who had a tragic golf cart accident at the country club.

I mean, the shoes are great if your kid is actually pulling up and learning to walk because they've a soft, non-slip sole that's good for foot development, but for a six-month-old? Probably massive overkill. Did I still put them on him every time we went to Target? Yes. Yes I did. Because, cute.

Let's talk about the staring

Speaking of Target, let's talk about the public outings. This was the absolute worst part for me. I'm already an anxious person. I don't like being perceived.

But when you've a baby in a helmet, everyone stares.

They don't usually mean to be malicious. Mostly it's just curiosity. But one day in the Target parking lot, this older Boomer guy literally stopped pushing his cart, stared at Leo, and asked me, "What happened? Did you drop him on his head?"

I froze. I wanted to yell at him. I wanted to explain positional plagiocephaly and the Back to Sleep campaign and the mechanics of a baby's unfused skull sutures. Instead, I think I just aggressively shoved a Kianao Organic Baby Romper Jumpsuit over Leo's legs (which, by the way, has these henley buttons that I absolutely fumbled and cursed at during 3 AM diaper changes, but the fabric was soft enough that it didn't irritate his neck where the helmet strap rubbed, so it was a wash), mumbled something about "it's just a shaper," and practically ran to my car.

You get so tired of explaining it.

But then, every once in a while, you'll be in the grocery store aisle looking blankly at coffee beans, and another mom will walk by with her toddler. She'll catch your eye, look at the helmet, and just give you this very specific, tired, knowing smile. And she'll say, "My daughter had the pink one. He looks so cute."

And you'll burst into tears right there next to the dark roasts.

It seriously works, and then it's over

The crazy thing about the helmet therapy is that it doesn't seriously squeeze their head. I thought it was like braces for teeth, applying pressure. But it doesn't. Dr. Miller explained (again, with the weird drawings) that the helmet just fits snug on the parts that stick out, and leaves an empty, hollow space over the flat spot. As the baby's brain grows, it just naturally pushes the skull out into that empty space.

And it works. It really works.

Leo wore his for about three and a half months. And then, one day, we went to the orthotist, they did the 3D scan, and they said, "He's done. His head is symmetrical."

Just like that. Over.

I took it off him, threw it in a box in the attic, and completely forgot about the tears and the smell and the Target parking lot. Until today. Six months later. Sitting here shivering in Dave's old hoodie.

So, to the mom who's currently sitting awake in the dark, watching her baby sleep, terrified because she noticed a flat spot on her baby's head... it's going to be fine. Your baby is not broken. You didn't fail them. Tummy time is great, but sometimes heads just get flat. You put the helmet on, they look like an adorable little roller derby player for a few months, and then they take it off.

Anyway, if you're deep in the flat head trenches right now, go treat yourself to a massive, expensive iced coffee, let the laundry sit for another day, and maybe browse Kianao's baby essentials to find something ridiculously soft to put on your baby's skin.

You're doing a good job.

The messy questions everyone asks me now

Whenever my friends have a baby with a flat spot, they text me in a panic. Here are the things I always end up typing back with one hand while Maya asks for another snack.