How Do You Adjust A Baby?

Hey everyone!

Some of you might notice when you're coming in the office we see a lot of babies and kids here in the office. And a lot of people really ask the question, why? But also they're really scared to honestly bring a baby in. And the reason why is because they have pictured in their head that we adjust a baby very similar that we do an adult, which is completely not the fact at all. The case for that is that we're very gentle in our adjusting no matter what we do, but for babies especially. So I'm going to talk through an example of what it looks like to get a baby adjusted. Kids are a little bit different, as they grow up, we're going to adjust just slightly different. But for a baby, a newborn especially, this is what you'll see.

So basically you'll see me just come under their pelvis, sometimes, do some ranges of motion for baby here, just a little rocking back and forth. Usually what we're looking for, again, are the muscles. We're also looking for any of the joints that aren't moving very well in there. Because babies should be very flexible, and if they're not, they had some sort of trauma during birth or something later on. So usually that's what you'll see from that.

So when it comes to the neck adjustment, basically what we're doing is just doing little movements from side to side. Also, you'll see just a little bit of movement side-to-side every now and then to test where the range of motion is. But again, we want to make sure it's balanced from side to side, especially if this baby or newborn is nursing, or again, we don't want them to have torticollis. We want to make sure things are free flowing and make sure the nervous system is functioning properly.

So that is how we adjust babies here in the office, it's not scary at all, and it's very important for their nervous systems.

Be Well

Dr. Lisa