Birth, Then Chiropractic

Imagine that you are floating in a dim, very warm, very comfortable place where your constant companion is the muffled sounds of voices and gurgles and the steady beat of your mother’s heart. You get pleasant waves of hormones, nutrition, and oxygen from your bloodstream. Now imagine your environment contracting, your warm liquid surroundings draining away, and finding yourself outside. Here, there are bright lights, there is harsh air filling your lungs, and your tiny muscles are exhausted from being pushed into the world.

There is quite the high level of sensory overload that happens in a newborn’s first days. Bright light, the sensation of skin being touched, sounds up close and personal, even the taste of milk is all overwhelming. Birth is a natural and beautiful part of the cycle of life, but it is still shocking and traumatic to both the new mother and new baby. A new infant is mostly sensory—just trying to regulate his or her little system and take in the world. On top of this—the equivalent of a splash of ice water to the nervous system—is the physical exhaustion from the birth process.

In a natural birth, something occurs that is like a skull “blowout.” A baby’s skull is not one hard globe of bone. The skull doesn’t totally fuse for a few years, in fact. The infant’s soft pieces of skull shift to allow its little head to become pointy and push through the birth canal. Then it balloons back out. This acts like a jump start to the newborn's brain and central nervous system. In a natural birth, there is tremendous pressure put on the head and body of a baby (and mother, for that matter.) This is why chiropractic care of a baby can help calm his or her system, encouraging better breathing and heart rate, less colic, and a more comforted first days of life in the big world.

Sometimes intervention is necessary in bringing a new person into the world. In a c-section, or even a doctor-assisted vaginal birth, there is even more pressure and irritation to the delicate new baby. Tugging on the baby’s head and placing IV needles, tubes, and foreign chemicals in him or her are all like an assault to a pure little nervous system. These babies need the gentle care of chiropractic even more.

A brand new human being will spend the next year, at least, learning how to make sense of images, sounds, smells, and touch. Their new little insides will be figuring out how to process food into nutrients and waste (and making for some interesting diapers in the meanwhile.) They will fall into their own circadian cycles of sleeping and waking, and learn how to distinguish sensations like hunger, discomfort, and contentment. This is all very complicated. The beauty of it is that you don’t need to instruct them on any of it. It is natural. You can help your little one on this journey with giving them the best start possible. Taking irritation out of the central nervous system with chiropractic adjustments will help.