Chiropractic Care

During pregnancy I had awful back pain. It's like I was huge and carrying twins. I remember calling a chiropractor who specializes in pregnant women and begging for her to get me in that day. She was able to work me in the next day and I was amazed at how much it helped. I saw her regularly for the rest of the pregnancy and it helped a ton until about 37 weeks and at that point I just lived with the back pain. I'm so glad I didn't live with the pain for months.

No wonder my back was hurting

A few months after the kids were born their pediatrician commented on their head shape and our son's lack of bending. She referred us to another chiropractor. There were two main issues.

The first was head shape. While my son's head shape wasn't perfectly round, it wasn't too extreme. My daughter's head was clearly misshapen. It was flat - not even slightly rounded - in the back. I'm not talking about one little flat spot, the entire back of her head was flat. We didn't get a lot of great photos, but hopefully these will help you see what I'm talking about. We rarely took photos of the back of the kids heads.

 The entire back of her head was flat.

 Another angle of the flatness

 Halfway through treatments

After 6 months of treatments. Slight curve noticeable now

The chiropractor the pediatrician referred us to started treating the head shape 4 times a week. As it got better, it did back off to 3, 2, and 1 time a week. By the very end we were only going once every 2 weeks before she released us from her care. Our daughter required more than 90 visits over 10 months to correct her head shape. This was a huge commitment from us, but now her head is round and you can't tell any difference.

No more treatments!!

Many babies have flat spots on their head and are treated with the large helmets. The most common in the US is the doc band. These are expensive, often not covered by insurance, and only prevent more flattening rather than correcting what has already happened. Chiropractic care was more effective and cheaper (though still not cheap or covered by insurance). I highly recommend chiropractic care for anyone who has a baby with a flat spot on their head.

While my son's head had a flat spot that we did get corrected, his biggest issues was his stiffness. He was diagnosed as hypertonic. Basically, he was stiff as a board. He didn't bend and when forced to bend he would cry and be upset. The first chiropractor treated him, but it just wasn't helping. She even told us he would probably never walk or bend since she couldn't help him. We went back to the pediatrician who wanted us to try another type of chiropractic treatment. She gave us another name and we called that chiropractor. After a phone consultation, we realized we could not make the intensive schedule and cost work for our family. I called the chiropractor that I had seen during pregnancy and discovered she did the same type of treatments for babies and we could afford her!

One baby bends and one doesn't

We started with weekly appointments and then backed off two every two weeks. There were a few times we were even able to only go to once every three weeks. While he is still being treated for this, we see a huge difference with each treatment. Before a treatment he is stiff and it hurts him to bend. After a treatment he can not only easily bend, but he's happier. As he gets older and is able to talk to us more we are beginning to get a better picture of what is happening. He will complain that his knee hurts the day before he stops bending the knee for example. He is walking, running, climbing, and everything else without limit. He has met each milestone differently, but has always been able to meet them.

 Babies should not be able to stand unassisted at 6 months

Only one could bend and sit

The most difficult part is watching him and knowing he can't do it the "easy" way other children can. When he was learning to pull up he would go from laying flat on his stomach to pulling himself up with his arms without ever bending at the waist. It looked goofy, but he was so proud of being able to stand. Our daughter, by contrast, followed the more typical pattern of going from laying to sitting, to pulling up, to standing. As I said, he is still receiving treatments so we don't know what the long term solution is yet. He also has other issues that we are dealing with to help him be happy and successful for the rest of his life.

Happy while crawling after a treatment

I am so thankful for the chiropractic care we have and are still receiving. It has quite literally changed our lives.