We’re in the countdown for helmets, having been measured officially on Wednesday. We’ll get the helmets themselves on Friday and be able to wean the twins into them over the next two weeks, at which point they’ll be wearing the helmets 23 hours a day, 7 days a week.

I’m weirdly excited about it, because it’s progress. It’s helping them to take steps forward that they otherwise wouldn’t have taken, and it’s fixing a problem before it becomes unfixable. I was scrolling through Instagram the other day (I’m @threelittlesith if you want to stare at pictures of my kids), just browsing the plagiocephaly tag, and I came across images of a kid who had a form of synostosis that caused his skull to fuse too soon, so his plagiocephaly couldn’t be corrected with a helmet, and he needed to have parts of his skull removed.

Which… yikes.

They’re not that bad. Ultimately, they’ve still got soft spots and you can tell that their skulls are still in pieces, which means we’ve got time to fix this, and that’s good. They’re pretty misshapen, to the point where you can tell that they need helmets, but the guy at the orthotics place said that he didn’t expect them to be in for too long, since they’re so little and starting early enough.

So.

You know.

The fitting, on Wednesday, went exceptionally well. Both twins were very well behaved, sitting still and quiet while they were measured and not crying much throughout. The office itself was filled with mostly diabetes patients coming in to get diabetes shoes, and they were all SUPER EXCITED to see even one baby, never mind two. So we did the “are they twins?” dance about 50 times and had a lot of old people smiling at them and cooing and saying, “Oh, you must have your hands full!”

We were the only ones in the waiting room by the time we were called, and we shuffled into a decent-sized office full of measuring gadgets and a medical table and cabinets and the like. Shortly thereafter, our measuring guy (I have no idea what his official title was) came in and used a handful of tools to take manual measurements of their skulls. He then had each twin wear this funny little sock that had just a space for their face to come out and, after attaching a device to said sock, took digital measurements that made a 3D picture of each baby’s head.

(basically like this, but these aren’t Isaac or Carrie)

The twins were unimpressed throughout, except with the glowy spinny toy they got to watch while being measured. And then they promptly fell asleep.

The only slight glitch in the system came when the receptionist came in to take our payment. We knew that our insurance was covering all but 20% of the helmets, which meant we’d be responsible for $360 of each, a total of $720. We also knew that we’d pay that in two installments: one after the measuring and one after we received the helmets. Whether due to my lack of sleep/brainmeats or just an overall miscommunication, the way the receptionist phrased our bill made me think that we owed $720 after the measurement and another $720 the next week, which we could’ve theoretically scraped together somehow, except we’d only planned for the $360 that day, graciously given by Kyle’s family.

So I had a brief heart attack and Kyle had a brief heart attack, and we both panicked until the receptionist clarified that no, we only owed $360 on Wednesday and the rest next Friday. Okay.

We ordered the twins’ helmets in white, since I want to be able to (a) dress them in whatever clothes I feel like and (b) decorate for the seasons. They had options like a galaxy print and MURICA and what have you, but the white will work just fine, especially as I learned that you can use just regular stickers and ModPodge on them, so there’s no need to spend $30 for decals or more if you go through an Etsy store. Some stickers from Michael’s will do the trick just fine, and Kyle bought like a gallon of ModPodge about a year ago (he was feeling crafty), so we’ll have fun.

(almost as much fun as my favorite person on the entire internet)

I’m determinedly not adding to my mom guilt list (which includes: son has too much screen time, do not have eight arms, naps instead of like making seasonal wreaths or something, does not own ironing board) that my twins are wearing helmets, because the more I think about it and look at them, the more I’m aware that it was unavoidable. Between the pregnancy and everyone being smushed, their prematurity, and the fact that they spent the first six weeks of their lives sleeping and doing nothing else, it’s no wonder they’ve got flat heads. The deck was stacked against them. And it’s fixable. Very much fixable.

I know some perfect parent exists somewhere who’d screech, “WELL IF YOU JUST HELD THEM MORE” to which I say

Saint Carrie and I will have none of your shaming, and you should go have a hot toddy and watch The Great British Bake-Off to calm yourself down.