some of you may have noticed that Thomas is wearing some sort of apparatus on his head, but have been too polite to mention it. Is he planning to play hockey? Does he fall alot? Is he hoping to be cast in the next Tron movie? 
(Yes, I know this one is for a very select segment, but it was a great movie. Look it up)
Well all are really poor guesses, so shame on all of you. I must admit, prior to being a parent and remotely caring about other people's children (I still really only care about Thomas, no offense to other children who may be reading this. By the way, good for you for reading!), I saw babies wearing helmets and had no idea what was going on. My best internal guess (because I never bothered to ask) was that the helmet was protecting a soft spot or something else that wasn't fully developed. Little did I know that I'd come face to face with the very helmet that I rarely gave a second thought to (probably not as ironic as I'm implying).
Turns out, the helmet is used to shape a child's head, to make it nice and round for that day in the future when Thomas decides to shave his hair either on a bet or in tribute to Michael Jordan. Thomas spent 5 and a half months, mostly on his back, which gave him a rather flat head in the back. The nurses did a great job of rotating him to minimize the effect, but you can only do so much. You basically have 2 options; Option 1, sit back and let nature take its course, hoping that the head will work itself out or that Thomas develops a talent in baseball or bull riding (where a hat is required), or option 2, shape the head with this contraption. This is completely cosmetic and he's not in any danger health-wise. We're just trying to bump Thomas up a notch more on the cuteness scale.
We debated about this greatly. We were concerned about whether this was a good investment, whether the helmet would hurt Thomas, whether we wanted to pile one more thing on Thomas' plate. There were many arguments in favor of not doing anything:
1. He could use his head as a coaster (what a great party trick!)
2. The flatness of his head would make him extremely aerodynamic in the tuck position when riding a bike.
Actually those were the only 2 real positives I could come up with, so we went with the helmet. We're such good parents.
Thomas wears the helmet 23 hours a day and he will probably wear it for 2 to 3 months. It just depends on how quickly he grows. The helmet is designed to encourage growth and we go in once a week or two and get adjustments. They measure the head and shave away the Styrofoam on the inside. He's already making good progress, so hopefully we won't have to wear it too long. It doesn't seem to bother him too much, but he does like to bang it with his hand.
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