Sarah's Diary Entries Diary Navigation: Choose A Diary Entry -------------------- Latest Entry: 4/7/03 -------------------- 3/14/03 3/13/03 -------------------- Sarah's Introduction

March 14, 2003

3/13/04- Our Phoenix Trip & A Surprise

Between the diary change and our recent trip to Phoenix, this would have been a super long one, so I did post both an intro and this entry tonight. So much is going on right now I hardly know where to begin!

For those of you new to my diary, my daughter has worn a DOCband helmet for most of her life to correct a misshapen head that she was born with. The company who makes Hannah's DOCband helmet is Cranial Technologies, and as a thank you to us moderators of the Yahoo! Plagiocephaly Support Group they invited the eight of us to Phoenix for a conference and tour of their corporate office. There are 8 of us moderators, who basically just read all posts to make sure the information presented is correct and also reply to as many posts as we can. This is quite the job as we have almost 3,000 members. Out of the eight of us, five were able to go. Since my father in law also lives in Phoenix, we decided to make a whole vacation out of it.

We had an afternoon flight and were sure to get there plenty early as we were flying Southwest and had no assigned seats. We had not purchased a seat for Hannah, but were happy to find out that there were plenty of seats so we could take her carseat. She was extremely fussy once we got going and I had the old stand by Benadryl just in case, so I decided to give it to her after about an hour of crying. She was starting to get sleep watching her Baby Einstein, so I put her in her carseat. She kept just about drifting off and then would cry and looked uncomfortable. I decided to take her out and try to get a better recline going with her carseat b/c it as facing too forward. As soon as I picked her up she puked ALL over me. Of course I had plenty of clothes for her, but nothing for myself, and to add insult to injury we were only an hour and a half into a six hour flight AND I had just given her six ounces of soy formula before the benadryl. I went in the bathroom and cleaned up the best I could, but decided my best bet would be to take my shirt off and continue the flight in just my bra and jacket. I could still smell nothing but puke for the next five hours. I knew the trip could only get better!

We spent the first two nights at Peter's dad's before joining the other moms at the hotel in time for the conference. We did lots of touristy stuff and enjoyed the warm weather immensely. I've never been out west before, and though all of you who live out there will probably laugh, I could not believe how big the cactuses get! They were bigger than the houses! Phoenix was a beautiful place and I would love to live there in the winter, but I don't think I could handle it in the summer. Plus, I'd miss the beaches of the Cape way too much! We had one day where it was unpleasantly hot for what I'm used to and it was only early March! Unfortunately it was the day we went to the Phoenix Zoo, so many of the animals were hiding out in cooler areas. Hannah's highlight of the trip was the Rainforest Cafe. We SO need one of those around here! I've never had a more peaceful meal with her. She was so enthralled by the fish in the tank right next to us and all the hubbub around that she barely complained at being strapped to the high chair at all. Even the man making balloon animals had to compete for her attention over the fish tank. That night there was a hail storm and it was pretty amusing to see all the kids outside the mall playing in the hail, as I'm sure many of them had never seen snow before.

The conference itself was incredible. I have complained in the past about why these helmets cost $3,000 apiece, but I now have a new found appreciation for this. It is amazing what goes into making a single one! I expected more machines and assembly line type stuff, but everything is done by hand and is completely individualized to the specific head they are working on. We also learned a ton on the importance of tummy time, how the helmets work, and about the various headshapes. They went over many of the questions that pop up on our board all the time, including why a headshape doesn't change and "round out on its own" after a child reaches about 2 years of age. This is a subject I have become really passionate about since Hannah was born, so I was in heaven with all my new knowledge! I'll write more about Hannah's experience in my next entry.

Before we left, I had contacted Cranial Technologies about some changes I have noticed in Hannah's headshape. I really feel that she has regressed somewhat since graduating from her last band in November, so I wanted their opinion. Back in November I had opted out of getting an exit cast done of her head for various reasons, so knowing for sure is difficult. They agreed to take another set of pictures and use some of their new technology to give me their best opinion. Hannah was digitized, which is Cranial Tech's method for 3D scanning a baby's head. This is still in the clinical trial phase, but will eventually replace the plaster casting they do now. It was so neat! In only 0.008 of a second all these little cameras captured a perfect image of Hannah from the shoulders up--and the best part? She didn't even have to stay still! Can you tell how impressed I am? Then a little machine next to the digitizer spits out a perfectly carved replication of Hannah's head, crying face and all! In all they feel Hannah could use another helmet, but our window is shortening as she's getting older so we'll have to do it ASAP. I was really surprised to hear that actually, though not completely disappointed.

They also were concerned about the head tilt Hannah has. She does not have any torticollis (neck tightness), so they only other explanation they could think of would be perhaps a visual disturbance. She will have her eyes tested April 29th. Has anyone ever done this with a one year old? Her casting for the next band will be on Tuesday. I'm certainly not looking forward to it, but it only lasts about 10 minutes. Her helmet will be in within two weeks. Cranial Tech also couldn't help but notice all Hannah's forehead bruises, so I also had to explain the head banging. They recommended another consult with our neurosurgeon, but our pediatrician disagreed as she is confident it's merely behavioral. She also feels pretty confident that this third helmet will cure her of that!

Of course I'm not happy about going the helmet route again. Now that Hannah is over a year old and her head is growing so much slower, it will take longer to get less correction. However, her head is still noticeably misshapen and if they feel it will help I can't not do it. Considering I have been so focused on her headshape for the last year or so, I know I see it more than others do. This is why I half expected them to say that it was fine and so mild that another helmet wouldn’t even help. I'm glad to hear I'm not imagining things at least! We are committed to doing all we can to get Hannah's plagio corrected, so off to Connecticut we go every other week for adjustments once again! I'm looking forward to seeing everyone again there though as they were so nice and such a big part of Hannah's life for over seven months! Wish us luck on the casting! I'm also nervous that now that she's almost 15 months old and very independent that she won't even keep the helmet on, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. They make duct tape for a reason! I'm kidding, of course!

Anyway, the rest of our trip was great and the flight home was much better (and only 4.5 hours instead of over 6!). It was sad taking off with temps in the 80's and landing in the snow, but at least spring isn't too far off. Hannah just loved being outside while we were there and got her first set of skinned knees to prove it. There isn't much grass in Phoenix and instead people use rocks to landscape, so it proved to be some tough terrain for her to conquer. It really is a beautiful area though and I wouldn't mind visiting again when I have more time. Oh, the other thing that I just loved was all the citrus trees everyone has. Peter's dad has orange, grapefruit, lemon, and lime trees in his back yard. It was so nice waking up (often while it was still dark out thanks to the time change!) and then heading out back to get some oranges for fresh squeezed OJ. It was very strange to me to see all these trees in everyone's yards as we drove by!

I have updated her website with some of our pictures from Phoenix. It is: http://www.babiesonline.com/babies/h/hannahbeans .
I still have one more roll to finish up and then I'll also post a picture of her digitized crying head so you can see how much it looks like her! She finally has enough hair on top that I was able to put it in a little pony tail and she looked so cute! Her head looked very crooked, but she looked super cute still! Some pictures of that are on the roll too, so hopefully I'll get them developed soon.

I hope everyone has found me over here. I'm still on the wait list for momstoday too as far as I know. Please stop by and help get my barenaked TTM board going!

***I just identically reposted this entry from yesterday because I realized I do not yet have a TTM board! I was told that until it is up and running I can still use my old one at:
http://interact.iparenting.com//postlist.php?Cat=&Board=btsarah

Thanks for Reading,
Sarah & Hannah