How Can CranioSacral Therapy Help Your Baby?

• Difficult Birth: Long labour or pushing stage, caesarean birth, ventouse or forceps delivery.
  

• Breastfeeding Challenges/Latching Issues: A babies’ sense of smell is an important part of their feeding, as is their “rooting” reflex (one of their primitive reflexes). Any tension patterns in the head can interrupt or alter these reflexes and contribute to feeding issues.
  

• Assisted deliveries such as ventouse and forceps deliveries can increase tension in the babies’ membranes (the connective tissues that surrounds the brain and spinal cord). This can change the shape of a babies palate which can contribute to their ability to draw the nipple in or suck. It can also create tension under the tongue, again having affect on feeding.
  

• Tongue or Lip Tie: Tongue/lip or cheek ties are becoming more commonly diagnosed, often as a result of seeking advice about breastfeeding difficulties. It may be necessary for the tie to be “revised” or “lasered”. However, these ties are usually part of a larger tension pattern in the system. Often your Dentist or Lactation consultant will refer your baby for CranioSacral Therapy to assist with helping the body self-correct.
  

• Fussy/Hard to Soothe Babies: The bones in our heads (the cranial bones) can often become restricted and tight. This might feel like there is a tight band around our head, similar to the feeling of wearing a headband that is too tight and it gives us a headache. When the cranial bones are tight we can feel irritable, have difficulty concentrating and generally feel a bit ‘off’. This is the same in babies, toddlers and older children.
  

• Sleeping Concerns: Often newborns “catnap” and don’t seem to sleep for long periods or time or their sleep/wake cycles seem out of balance with day/night! CST can help babies find an equilibrium with their sleep cycles by helping their nervous systems calm down.
  

• Head Misshapen (or has Bumps/Ridges): Misshapen heads or “flat spots” are a relatively common occurrence in newborns. It can occur due to a little compression from forceps or a ventouse delivery. Other times it may be related to tensions in the pelvis or rib cage or a mild tightening in one side of the neck (called torticollis) causing the baby to favour lying on one side when sleeping or in the capsule. Head-shape issues can over time contribute to colic and reflux and mild delays in development.
  

• Digestive Issues (Including Colic, Reflux & Constipation): We have a nerve that goes to all of our organs (called the vagus nerve). This nerve comes out of the head just behind the ear. If we get tight or stuck in this area it can irritate or squeeze the nerve and create issues with the organs such as colic or reflux.
  

• General Development/Gross Motor Skills: Our nervous systems are integral to our ability to learn and develop new skills. In babies these are things such as learning to roll, sit, crawl, talk and walk. If our nervous system is tight or restricted a lot of energy goes into maintaining those restrictions rather than on developing new pathways for skill development. CST can assist in these developmental processes.

Braces, Bite and Jaw Issues Headaches/Migraines

Sleep Issues Learning challenges

Auditory and Sensory processing disorders

Speech and language development

Gross and fine motor skill development

Seizure disorders/Epilepsy

Anxiety (self-regulation dysfunction)

Even the most natural of births can place tension on a newborn babies nervous system. During labour a newborn leaves their warm, safe, secure environment in utero and enters the bright, noisy, unfamiliar world. Sometimes it is necessary for some intervention, whether this be assistance from forceps or ventouse or a cesarean birth and this can contribute to minor tension patterns within the newborn. Whatever the birth experience, CST can help a newborn baby recover and thrive in their life.

Why You May Want to Bring Your Baby in for a CranioSacral Therapy;

How Can CST Help Older Children?

At Evolve Manual Therapy almost half of our client list is children between the ages of 4 and 13 years old! We work with children for a variety of different reasons, but one of the things many of them have in common is difficulty in regulating their nervous systems. When the nervous system is not regulating well, it can end up in a state of persistent “fight or flight“. This might look like emotional outbursts, anxiety, tantrums, difficulty sleeping, difficulty learning, difficulty concentrating, irritable stomach, changes to toileting. issues with loud noises, difficulty with food textures and more!

This is because the nervous system is unable to shift into its “rest and digest” phase easily. When our body is in “fight or flight” it does not prioritise easy sleep, easy digestion, calm emotions, learning and concentrating, because it is more focussed on keeping us safe.

CranioSacral Therapy is a very gentle, hands-on treatment that aims to teach the nervous system how to regulate itself more easily, come to a state of stillness and balance, and learn how to stay there.

What does a CranioSacral Therapy session look like for your child?

Our therapists will always start out by listening to your concerns as a parent, but we will also talk to your child and find out from them what they are experiencing. We will talk to your child about what to expect during the treatment so that they are prepared for what is to come and empowered to understand what is happening in their own bodies.