Podcast #8
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[00:00:00] Today I wanted to talk about a patient I have in my practice and talk a little bit about how we as parents need to decide what kind of philosophy about health we're going to have if we don't already have one. So the patient I wanna tell you about. He came to see me for the first time when he was three months old.
His parents brought him in and it was their first baby, which is kind of an important piece of information because. None of us know what is normal and what isn't. With our first child, we're mostly just working really hard to keep them alive all day every day, and trying to navigate all of the millions of things we didn't even know we were gonna have to navigate before having kids.
And we really have no idea what we're doing, what we should be worried about, what we shouldn't be worried about. [00:01:00] So this little boy was three months old when he came in the first time, and I could tell that the mother was very unsure about bringing him in to see me, which is absolutely understandable because most people don't really know what happens in a chiropractor's office if they haven't been themselves and.
Pediatric chiropractic looks much different from when adults get adjusted, so I'm very used to that. And I can say that in 23 years I have never had new parents leave the office doing anything but smiling after they see what actually happens during a pediatric visit, which is as it should be. So we.
Started out this visit with this three month old little boy, as I always start out by having the parents and the baby come in and sit down. And we started going through the case [00:02:00] history, which means they spent some time telling me about why they brought their son to see me, what it was that had them concerned.
And as they gave me the details, I got to ask some questions along the way to make sure I understood all of it and I got more information on anything I needed clarified or expanding. Okay. So this little boy who was three months old was technically fine by all the usual standards. The mother was in her early thirties.
She was healthy. She had had a pretty healthy pregnancy with nothing significant causing her any problems, and she had what she described as a normal delivery, but told me that it had taken a very long time, which is not unusual for her first birth. Some babies, most of them even pretty much sleep constantly during the first few days and maybe even first few weeks of their lives.[00:03:00]
But this little boy had not done that. The parents told me that although he didn't necessarily fit the criteria for a colic baby, and those criteria can vary wildly as colic can be used as a pretty. Broad term for an unhappy baby. In their case, they, they meant, you know, pretty intense crying for more than three hours per day, sort of the typical definition.
And even though he didn't fit those criteria specifically, he was just not a very happy baby. He wasn't really happy when he was breastfeeding, although he had gained a healthy amount of weight and the mother didn't feel like they had issues with the latch. He wasn't acting like he was having stomach pains while he was feeding.
He just wasn't relaxed. Calm and happy while he was feeding. And the same was true of this baby pretty much in everything else [00:04:00] that he did during the day when he was awake, he was generally fussy. He cried a fair amount when the parents felt like everything had been done to set the stage for a baby who should be content when they've slept and when they've eaten, and they don't need to be changed.
But he was just never content or relaxed no matter what they did. And the mother told me that in addition to that, she felt like he was really stiff in his body. He wasn't like the relaxed, kind of squishy babies She saw other mothers with who were around the same age. He was always pretty rigid and never felt like he was relaxed in his body.
And the midwife in the hospital had commented that he had a very strong neck right after being born because he was holding his head up for, unusually long periods of time right after being born. And both parents said that they could sort of, you know, lift him without really [00:05:00] supporting his head from pretty early on because he could hold his head up.
They also told me that he spent more time with his head turned towards the right, no matter whether they talked to him or sang to him from the left, or if you know, on the right side of him was a bare wall. He preferred to have his head turned to the right and he often slept with his head back in with his neck in extension, so his head tilted backwards.
And if I remember correctly, I think the dad described it as kind of reminding him of what the Exorcist looked like. For those of you who were brave enough to have seen that movie, his digestion was pretty good, but his sleep was very often, short periods of sleep where he would sort of jolt awake and they would have a really hard time getting him back to sleep.
So he was sleeping for really brief periods of time during the day. And also during the [00:06:00] daytime, not only at night that he would jolt awake, but also during the daytime from what seemed to be a, you know, a deep sleep just to sort of his whole body kind of shaking and waking himself up. So I asked the parents, as I always ask all parents, um, who they had been to see besides me and.
In Norway, there's a system where a specific local clinic called a, where both pediatricians and pediatric nurses work and they see all kids in Norway from zero to five years old. They're all over the country and they are. Pretty proactive in that they schedule an appointment to come to the home of all people who've just had a baby.
When that baby is about a week old to visit with the parents, so the nurse comes to your home to visit with the parents after they've just had a baby, and they [00:07:00] usually weigh and measure the babies and. Try to get a general idea of how things are going. They answer any questions and they set up follow up visits for the babies at the clinic.
That usually happen at about six weeks of age, three months of age, and more often if there are issues going on for the mother or the baby that need additional follow up. And this is where all kids are seen until they're five years old, unless they need, you know, a specialty consultation for something.
So it's a very sort of strict, regimented system of follow-up for babies and children that are born here. And I think it's good in many ways that there is a very low threshold to contact them with questions and concerns when. You know, the nurse was just sitting at home in your sofa, drinking tea, asking you how you're doing a few days or a few weeks ago.
So it's, it's a very easy, it sort of lowers [00:08:00] the, the how difficult it is to take contact when you have questions in questions, you know, show up all the time when you have a new baby at home. So I think it's good in many ways, the system, but it also means that I know that when I ask my patients. Who they have been to see before me.
They've all been to the, and seen the pediatric nurse or the doctor, at least in most cases, which these parents had. So then I always ask, what did they say when you were there? And I already know what they said because I have, uh, quite a few years of experience and I've seen so many babies over the years.
But I ask anyways because I'm working us toward the part of the conversation that I think is really important. And these parents answered exactly as I knew they would. And that was to tell me that. They'd been told that it's very normal for babies to be fussy, that he didn't seem to fit under the umbrella of a [00:09:00] colic diagnosis, and he was gaining weight like he should be, and he seemed to otherwise be growing and developing, and they just needed to give it some time.
And so I answered that the way that I always do. I told them that. Nothing they said at the was wrong. That's, this is clearly a baby who doesn't have anything seriously wrong with him. He's growing, he's developing. There are no life threatening things going on here that they need to be addressing.
And I do not disagree that babies can definitely be fussy and they can have an off day just like the rest of us can. For sure. But then I said, what I also always say to all parents, and that was that even though there was definitely nothing seriously wrong, it sounded to me like he was trying to let everybody know that it wasn't exactly great either.
And even [00:10:00] though babies can definitely be fussy, they should also have periods of time where they seem like life is pretty good too. They should be relaxed and content and not rigid in their bodies, and even if they don't always sleep great, they should be able to sleep more than 15 or 20 minutes without jolting awake every 20 minutes all night long.
Right? And this really gets to the point of why I wanted to talk about this patient today on the podcast. There really is nothing special about this particular little boy. I see lots of this type of patient every week and I have for the entire time that I've been in practice. But the reason I want to talk about it is because this kind of patient is a really big deal for parents to be aware of because.
Babies and children who don't have a specific set of problems or symptoms that can be labeled with a diagnosis, [00:11:00] but they are clearly not thriving, they're not functioning at their full potential, and it is so easy to end up in the wrong person's office at this point and have them make you feel as a parent, like you're being hysterical because your child isn't.
In any way, you know, bad enough to warrant a diagnosis and they make you feel like you're almost making up a problem or being unrealistic in your expectations for your child to thrive. And in my opinion, and I know it could sound a little bit harsh, but I think you need to leave that person's office and find someone else who lives and practices by a different set of standards.
One that doesn't expect the sort of bare minimum for our children's health and that respects and understands that by the time something warrants a diagnosis, it's usually been whispering for a long time and it's in the window where things are whispering that they are often a [00:12:00] lot easier to correct.
That's the case with both kids and adults, so. Getting back to this little boy who was in my office. I examined him and he had a present Murrow reflex that was pretty strong. That's not unusual. At three months of age, it usually integrates somewhere between two and four months. So this was not a case of a primitive reflex that was failing to integrate.
He had a rooting reflex, Palmer grasps reflex, a spinal gallant reflex, and an asymmetric tonic neck reflex. And all of these reflexes were present when they should be present. And this little boy did not have low muscle tone. In general, he had a good, healthy muscle tone both in his upper body and his lower body.
When I examined the function of his spine, he had decreased function in the joint between C one and C two, which is the very top two bones in the neck. This is what chiropractors call a vertebral subluxation. [00:13:00] It's a decrease in the healthy normal movement of the C one segment. In this little boy's case, it was on the right side, but.
Put really simply, this impairs the function of the spinal segment. It, it affects the messages being sent through the nerves that go from the spine to the brain, and this affects the brain's ability to properly interpret what's happening out in the body. It causes poor function of the muscles in the area of the upper neck, which sort of translates into.
General poor body control since so much of our healthy movement is dependent on being able to move your neck properly and at that age, it's really important for when this little boy starts needing better and stronger control of his head and neck so he can start to roll from side to side and back to front and front to back.
And when the muscles at the top of the spine aren't able to function properly, they don't send the correct feedback up to the brain. [00:14:00] That helps to develop even more strength and even better control of these muscles. The brain isn't able to send the proper signals to use and strengthen those muscles because it isn't being informed that that's needed and necessary.
And all of this can happen without there being a whole lot of fuss about it, for lack of a better way of putting it. This little boy was often frustrated and clearly having a hard time finding a place of ease in his body. But it wasn't a case where he was, what would be termed as having, you know, failure to thrive or not developing properly or, or gaining weight or all these things that are typically really closely followed to make sure babies are not in a life-threatening situation.
He just wasn't at ease in his body and he probably had pain, even though this is really hard to be able to say for sure. Uh, when you're seeing, you know, patients who can't talk and tell you how they're doing yet. He wasn't sleeping well. He [00:15:00] was generally just unhappy. So what happened to this little boy?
Right? What did I do with him and how did it work? I started by explaining what I just told you about how decreased function in the spinal segments impact both the neurology and the musculature. And how I often see it expressed in young babies is that it gives them the inability to feel ease in their bodies.
The whisper symptoms that we talked about before in a case like this are often just that a baby who just can't find ease and relaxation and seems to be more on edge, more unhappy, less able to sleep well. And the thing that I know from having been in practice for so many years now is that these parents had really good timing in their visit.
Obviously, I think everyone should be getting their baby's spinal function checked as early as possible and right after birth, preferably. But they were in my [00:16:00] office before this decrease in function started to impede this little boy's ability to start to roll over and to move his body in the ways that a baby between three to five months should be starting to do.
And a lot of parents come to see me after they realize that. Their babies are not doing some of these things or any of these things when they should be doing it. And at a point where the babies are starting to be significantly behind in meeting their motor milestones. These parents were here before that happened, and that always makes for an easier process because.
The problem hasn't had a longer amount of time to start to create compensatory patterns. So this little boy got his first chiropractic adjustment that day in my office, and the goal of the adjustment is to take the first steps to correcting the reduction in function to this spinal segment so that the nerves can [00:17:00] fire more properly to the brain, and the brain can start to send better control to the muscles that were incredibly.
Stiff and rigid on the right side of this little boy's neck, which was making it really hard for him to turn his head to the left. So typically, these spinal segments need to be adjusted a few times before you start to see a significant change because it takes some time for the neurology to adapt and for the brain to be better able to send the proper signals to the muscles.
On the third visit, the mother came in with this little boy and she told me that she felt like she had gotten an entirely different child. He was smiling at her and interacting more with her when she talked to him and saying to him he was happier, more able to, you know, lay for short periods of time on his own without her constantly having to hold or to rock him, to keep him soothed.
She told me, and this is verbatim, [00:18:00] that this was the first time she actually was able to see who this little baby she had given birth to three months ago actually was, and start to form what felt like a bond between the two of them. And this way that she put that to me, it made a really strong impression on me because.
We all know the thousands of reasons that it is imperative that mother and baby form a strong emotional attachment as early as possible, and that babies continue to develop that attachment that starts with their mother as the basis for the formation of healthy relationships throughout their lives.
And it really. Goes without saying, even though a lot of women would probably never has been, have been as comfortable to say it straight out as this woman was, that trying to form an attachment with a baby who is always fussy and just on the brink of starting to scream and cry all the time doesn't really bring out the [00:19:00] best version of who you as a mother need to be.
In your, you know, already exhausted state after just having given birth to be able to form these really important bonds. It's much easier when you aren't thinking about, you know, how long you have to do this before you can have 15 minutes to yourself in the shower away from the baby who's draining you of all your energy.
And it doesn't really fit into the ideal version of motherhood to put it like that. But there's no arguing that motherhood is much more pleasant when you at least get some peaceful, calm, nice periods of time together as well. So this little boy came to see me a few times, pretty close together in the very beginning.
And since then, he's followed up about every three or four months just to make sure everything developmentally is following the plan. He's only needed to be adjusted a few times since those first initial visits, and he's almost two years old at this point. [00:20:00] I followed up his primitive reflexes to make sure everything was integrated at the correct times.
I followed his motor milestones. We've talked about his speech, his balance, his coordination, which are obviously still developing, but. I've been a place for the parents to come to make sure things were on track and to keep this little boy healthy and functioning well along the way. The mother and I have developed a relationship over these almost two years, and we've talked about all kinds of things.
Health related, what normal sleep looks like, what nutrition is needed to build healthy brains and bodies. What kinds of things they can do to promote healthy motor and sensory development. And we'll probably spend the next couple of years talking about what is normal behavior and emotional regulation for kids that age.
'cause kids between about a year and a half to four years old are, you know, no jokes sometimes when it comes to those topics. [00:21:00] So this gives you a peek into. A pretty typical case in a chiropractor's office who works with babies and children. And again, my intent with telling you about this case was to both give you a peek behind the curtain, but also to discuss this type of patient where there is no name or diagnosis necessarily, but there is a lack of optimal function or an inability to thrive fully in life.
And it's sort of a different way to set your thermostat as a parent. And it's definitely very typical behavior to wait and see how things go. And in some cases that can be the right approach. But I, I think it's a good idea for all of us to think about what goals we have for our family's health and choose.
The caregivers who are in alignment with our own philosophy and our own way [00:22:00] of thinking about health. So I hope that you found something helpful in the time that we spent together today. I wanna thank you again for being here, and we'll see you in the next episode.
