Pregnancy and babies

 

It is a big job being pregnant. Normal strains and injuries can happen during pregnancy, just like at

any other time of your life, as well as pregnancy-related physical difficulties as you grow. Your body posture changes significantly during pregnancy – as your baby grows your lower back tips forward often leading to lower back pain and then upper back tightness; in the later stages as your hips prepare for birth you can get discomfort around the hips and outer thighs making it uncomfortable to sleep. These are just some of the normal pregnancy issues that are often very responsive to osteopathic treatment. Not only do we want to reduce your pain and discomfort, but we want these areas of your body to work as well as possible for your upcoming birth. You don’t really need to have any extra pain heading into your labour!

 

These same areas of your body (especially your lower back and pelvis) form the birth passage for your baby, and it is important that they can move as well as possible to give your baby space to descend. Having some osteopathic treatment to align your pelvis before you go into labour can therefore be helpful for both you and your baby during the birth.

 

Baby is designed to go through the normal but very strong pressures of being born. In an ideal world, they (and you) would pop back into their most comfortable and physically relaxed state after this journey. The reality is this doesn’t always happen. Sometimes babies have areas of tightness from their in-utero position, sometimes from the way in which they birthed (be that fast, slow, anterior, posterior) and sometimes we don’t know why they appear uncomfortable. What seems like a “good” birth such as a relatively fast one, may in fact be more challenging for your baby than a long slow birth which could of course be more challenging for you. This is why we recommend an osteopathic treatment and check up for baby sometime early on, even if the birth went well and baby seems settled. Small strains at birth tend to become more noticeable as they grow, and treating when they are very little can often prevent some strains developing into problems.

 

It is a huge adjustment for baby to get used to the world, and where osteopathy can really help is settling any areas of physical discomfort they may have. Because our babies cant tell us they are uncomfortable, the way they may show us is with crying, not sleeping, general unsettledness and so on. Osteopathy can help them to be more comfortable, and parents may see changes in so many different ways –

 

 

Osteopathy has gained a lot of popularity for treating the symptoms of colic and reflux, and we often see great changes in babies nature if there are underlying physical strains contributing to these conditions. A colicky unsettled baby that wants to be carried a lot is hard work, and whilst sometimes this is simply a babies nature, at other times it may be due to physical discomfort that they cannot express or looking further afield to things such as allergies and intolerances causing tummy upsets. It is common in colicky babies to see tight muscle in the tummy and around the digestive tract, restrictions through their upper back and neck, and often a lot of tension around the base of the head where very sensitive nerves sit. Reducing these tensions so that baby can lay more comfortably, wriggle and stretch often helps change the colicky symptoms, and can then help baby feed better and so on.

 

We don’t have a one-size fits all approach to treating children, or anyone for that matter. That is why osteopathic treatments for colic are varied depending on your child’s needs, and why osteopathy seems like the magic solution for one baby and not for another.

 

We think it is worth trying, and even if it doesn’t resolve your baby’s symptoms, you can know that they are physically well, and if we don’t find anything we won’t keep you coming.