Hey everybody, my name is Dr. Alex Coleman. I'm the owner of Maximized Chiropractic here in Bismarck, North Dakota, and today I want to talk to you guys about why every C-section baby should be adjusted by a pediatric chiropractor.

So first, I want to talk about a couple of different stories. The first one, I want you to put yourself in this situation. There's a mom in this nice, bright room. The room is extremely sterile. There are dozens of doctors and nurses and support staff around them. It's peaceful and calm, and everybody has a smile on their face. And these doctors have more collective years of experience than a Titanic survivor. The mom has all of the feelings of what's going on in her body taken away, and she just basically has to lie there. Her husband holds her hand, and everything is super peaceful. And she might feel a little bit of tugging and pulling pressure, and all of a sudden, there's a baby. That baby gets taken away to get cleaned and get taken care of, pretty much a baby on autopilot. Now, that sounds pretty easy.

So, let's compare that to a slightly different experience. This is Whitney. This is me trying to catch Wilder over a toilet. Story for a different day. This is one of the most incredible experiences of our lives. Whitney is an absolute amazing human being, and this is just one of those moments that she really showed her stuff. She was freaking awesome. And this experience was much different than the last one. It was chaotic, it was loud, she was making crazy noises. As you can see on her face, you can probably assume the kind of sounds that she was making. And yep, that face. J did a great job of taking a picture, capturing this exact moment and the feelings that we were feeling. This looks like, "Oh my gosh, this baby is getting rushed out into this world, this birth canal!" It's loud, it's over a toilet, there's not even a doctor there. Like, me and the nurse caught Wilder coming out. There was nobody there to help. To most people, this environment seems like, "Oh my gosh, this is where the hard work was. This was where it was hard on the baby."

But which one was really easier for the baby? Which one was easier for the mom? So today, we're going to talk about some of the reasons why that first experience might not be quite as gentle and easy as it seems, and some of the things that we can do to help your baby recover from that. So, the first one, they didn't get the squeeze. During a vaginal delivery, it is very normal and very healthy for a baby to get squeezed. If any of you have had a baby already born vaginally, and you saw that your baby had this huge cone head, you were probably like, "Oh my gosh, that's so bad! That looks so wrong." This is actually a very healthy thing. When a baby comes down through the birth canal, they get squeezed. And it happens for very intentional reasons.

So first off, the squeeze happens because their little bones in their head are like little plates in the Earth that can shift around. And when they're coming down through the birth canal, those plates actually overlap like this. So, the baby's head goes from big to a little bit smaller, so it's easier for them to come down and out. When they're born, they can kind of look like this, where their head is elongated and stretched. This actually does a very good job of squeezing their brain, and that wakes them up. A C-section baby is kind of the equivalent of… if it was 3:00 in the morning and you were in a deep sleep, and all of a sudden somebody comes into your room and turns the light on and shakes you and says, "Wake up!" Then you jolt out of bed, and you're like, "Holy cow, what's going on? I'm stressed out." You just immediately get into fight-or-flight, and you have that kind of anxiety, panic attack almost, because you're woken up out of a deep sleep.

During a vaginal delivery, part of the squeeze is part of slowly waking up the baby. It's like a slow, gentle… the sun's coming up, a nice, easy, relaxing alarm goes off on your phone. That's how babies should be born. That's how we're supposed to be born. That's how we were intended to be born. So, the babies end up happier when they come out. They're more awake, they're more alert, they're easier to breastfeed, you name it. Part of the squeeze also helps to drain their lungs. When a baby is inside of the mother's womb, they're soaking in fluid. They're actually breathing in that fluid into their lungs, and the fluid can get stuck in there. When they come down through the birth canal, most of that fluid gets squeezed out. So, C-section babies have to have a lot of suction and clearing of their lungs, and oftentimes, days or weeks afterwards, they're still coughing up phlegm because there's mucus and amniotic fluid stuck deep in their lungs. So, part of a vaginal delivery is waking them up through the squeeze, and it's actually a very healthy thing. C-section babies don't get this.

So, this next video I'm about to show you… this makes me squeamish. I don't like watching it. It makes me very uncomfortable. I'm not showing it to put down the medical system or these doctors or any doctors that do this procedure. It is a procedure that can absolutely save children's lives, and I'm very grateful for it. The point of showing you this video is to show you that after this procedure is done, if it has to be done, there should be things that are done to help your baby recover from it. If you are squeamish at all, if this makes you uncomfortable, please turn your eyes away for the next 30 seconds or a minute. It's a pretty quick video, but the point of this video is to kind of show you that coming out of the womb through a C-section is not an easy process.

(Video plays)

There you go, little fella. Come on, buddy. Alright, it's a girl! It's a girl! Make you cute for the camera.

So, yeah, seeing that is kind of hard. So, I'm hoping that seeing a baby come out through a C-section like that is a good reminder that these babies go through a lot during this process. Obviously, the mom goes through a lot as well, which is why we always recommend getting checked as a mom after having a baby, whether it's vaginal or C-section. But babies especially… There's that moment where their little tiny heads have to get grabbed and pulled out. It's not like they have this big, giant opening where they can just gently grab this baby and pick them up, as we would after they're out. There's a moment where all they can do is grab that head, and it's no fault to them. This is how the procedure has to happen, but it's intense, and that baby goes through a lot. Their little spines and necks are the weak link. Their neck is where I see most of the issues in brand new babies, especially during C-sections. Their spines are not designed to resist that pulling motion, and that can cause a lot of pulling and stretching and turning in their spine and their nerves, and that can affect them for a long time. So, making sure that a kid is adjusted after this happens, if it has to happen, is a great idea for you as a parent.

One other really big thing that we've seen in our office… Breastfeeding is hard enough already. This is a process that we have found, and research has shown, that when a baby is born through a C-section, their breastfeeding rates are much lower. Breastfeeding can be much, much harder. So, since it's… Even in a perfect, ideal world, it still can be incredibly hard. We want to help you through this process to make breastfeeding as easy as possible. Since C-section babies tend to have a harder time waking up right away… Maybe it's because of the chemicals and the medications that were used during the labor, because they didn't get enough of a squeeze and their nervous system wasn't stimulated enough to wake up… Whatever it is, the babies have a harder time waking up and breastfeeding right away, which makes the latch poor from the beginning, makes weight gain slower from the beginning, and it makes it that much more stressful for Mom. If you combine this with the fact that a lot of moms are uncomfortable after having a C-section, their incision site… Their muscles are literally disconnected and don't work very well, so it's hard to move around, hard to position the baby. This makes breastfeeding even harder.

So, part of what I do in our office, part of what my wife Whitney does in her office, is we help make sure that breastfeeding is going smoother. If we can make sure that breastfeeding is going smoothly from the beginning, you're going to have a much easier time long-term, and you're much more likely to hit the goals that you want with breastfeeding long-term.

So, how can we help? This is such an important topic. This is a huge passion of mine because I hear from moms all the time, they tell me, "Oh, my baby had a C-section, they didn't have to go through the birth canal, so they're fine." And the reality is, that's probably not the case. I've been in practice for 12 years, and I still have never seen a single child that didn't have some level of stress in their neck who was born from a C-section. Removing the spinal trauma that has to happen… It's pretty much unavoidable during that moment… is so important for your baby. When they start their life with a subluxated and twisted and irritated nervous system, it starts out their life from a deficit. Picture having a tree that you plant in your backyard, and six feet above that tree, you have a power line. That tree probably will grow okay over its life, but it's not going to be straight. It's not going to be optimal. It's going to have to grow around that power line, and that's not ideal. So, if our kids start out their life with these little, tiny problems, they just tend to amplify as they get older, and they morph into other things. They morph into kids that have colic and breastfeeding problems, which changes into, "My kid's sick all the time, and they're getting ear infections all the time." Before you know it, you've got a toddler who's sensitive and sensory-seeking and irritable and throwing tantrums every time you go to Target. Then you've got a teenager who is depressed and anxious and miserable. And then they just end up being like that as adults.

So, these little, tiny things that we can change as babies can have a huge cascade for their entire life. So, removing that spinal trauma through chiropractic adjustments is the absolute best way to make sure any little stress that was put on their spines during those procedures can be removed. You can bring your baby back to a clean slate, and their nervous system has the best chance of developing as healthy as possible.

Other things that we do in our office, and that pediatric chiropractors do in general, is we restore proper cranial movement. So, you saw from that slide that showed the baby that had kind of a cone head. That's very common. When that happens in a healthy way, the cranials don't need any work. But that doesn't happen all the time. So, during a C-section, or maybe a birth that was too fast or too slow, we have spots in their cranials that we can actually adjust. We can make sure that the bones in their head are moving really nicely and are opening up nicely, so as they grow, they're more likely to have a beautifully round, shaped head. When those cranials are not moving well, they're more likely to have a flat spot and need a helmet. And inside their head, their sinus canals can actually be smaller in some spots, and that can cause them to have a higher rate of ear infections, get sick more often, be mouth breathers, and have difficulty with their latch.

So, helping babies' latch mechanics is another big, important part of chiropractic care for a baby. In our office specifically, we have multiple CLCs. I'm a CLC, my wife is a CLC, and our jobs are to help make sure that your baby is breastfeeding as well as possible. And my part of that job is to make sure that your baby can physically do it well. So that means looking at the inside of their mouth, looking at their jaw and how well their jaw can open and close, how well their neck can turn left and right, how well their tongue can move up and down and make suction. There are so many mechanics and components to the latch that need to happen just right for the latch to go well, and those are all things that we check in our office.

Helping you find parenting confidence… That's one of my favorite things that we do, because I see a lot of first-time parents… If you have a child already, if you can remember back to this moment of when you were just like, "I don't know what the heck I'm doing. I've been given this baby, and I don't know what to do." Helping the parents in our office find their confidence and know that they can do this is such a good thing.

So, consistent chiropractic care… That is the number one thing that most babies are missing from their life. This is not a one-and-done thing, unfortunately. This is no different than going to the dentist, or going to the gym, or taking a bottle of antibiotics. You know, like if you went to the dentist and told your dentist, "Thanks for cleaning my teeth, dude. See you never! I'm hoping my teeth will be cleaned for the rest of my life." And you go home, and you don't brush your teeth, and you never go back to the dentist… How do you think that's going to end up? It's not going to work, because you're going to go eat, you're going to go do other things that cause your teeth to build up plaque and have problems. That's why we need to see a dentist consistently, to erase these problems. If you went to a personal trainer and said, "Hey, I'm going to try this whole exercise thing. One of my friends told me that it's pretty cool, and they said you're a really good personal trainer, so I figured I'm going to try this." And you try it, you work out really hard, even for, like, two weeks. Go to the gym six times in two weeks. You work out so hard. How do you think you're going to look after six weeks? Probably the exact same. You're definitely better off for working out six times than you were before, but in the grand scheme of things, that's nothing. That's just a drop in the bucket.

Chiropractic care, thankfully, is much easier than going to the gym. You need to see us much less than you need to go to the gym to stay in shape. But it's the same concept. Good things take time. This is no different.

So, who are the types of kids that should see a pediatric chiropractor? I'm biased, but I really think every single baby, every single kid, should be at least checked. But babies that are in higher need of chiropractic care… Obviously, this webinar is talking about C-section babies specifically, so that is a very big one. Babies that are born really fast or really slow. Now, when I say really fast, I mean like four or five hours or less. When I say really slow, I mean like 14, 15 hours or more. That sweet spot is that kind of 6 to 10-hour range. And even… I mean, a 10-hour labor can actually go pretty fast. It just depends on what you're calling "labor." When Wilder was born… That picture that you saw earlier… She was born incredibly fast. Her labor started at, like, 10:30 at night, and she was born just a couple hours later. And we were planning a hospital birth at this time. She was our third and our last hospital birth. And when we got there, it was like, "Oh, go pee in a cup, go put this gown on," and, "Whoa, these… like, I think I have to pee. So I'm going to walk over to the toilet. Oh no, never mind, that's a baby coming out." So, it was literally that fast. Like, our OB didn't even make it to the hospital. We got there and literally minutes later she was born. It was an incredibly fast labor. So, she had a lot of spots that I adjusted immediately from birth. Her picture is right above me in my office right here, of her first adjustment she ever got. She was just a couple minutes old when I started to erase those, and I adjusted her three times a week for a while so I could erase all those little spots. So, even babies that aren't born from a C-section have a ton of things that can happen in their spine. It's like a rollercoaster when they come out fast like that, and there's things that need to be shifted to help them grow.

Slow births are the same. If a baby takes a long time to come down and out, there's just a ton of time of pressure, of that uterus pushing down and pushing down and pushing down, and it starts to wear them out. And we can help their little bodies. Whenever an intervention is used, like inductions, or Pitocin, or a vacuum, or forceps… Any intervention is an extra layer of stress for your baby. This is not me saying that inductions are unnecessary, or Pitocin is unnecessary, or saying they're good or bad, but they are an extra layer of stress that gets put on your baby. And if they have to be used, then it's a good idea to have your baby checked to make sure that there's nothing going on that can be erased.

Some signs that your baby has this level of stress that can be helped with are things like their latch is really poor, they're not breastfeeding well, they're really gassy, they're colicky… I don't really like the word "colic," but when your baby is crying a bunch and you can't figure out why. When your baby's not sleeping well… When you have a baby it's exhausting, it's tiring, you're worn out, you don't know what's going on. But there's a difference between a normal level of worn out and "my baby is really struggling" worn out. And I see that every day. So that is a big way to know if your baby needs to be checked. And again, really every baby should be checked. This is my biased answer, but I'm very passionate about this. This is something that I know that if every single baby was at least checked from birth and had their original birth trauma removed, that every single kid would be healthier.

So, if you're watching this, that probably means that you're at least interested in trying chiropractic care for yourself or for your baby. The best time to start, for you guys, is now. If you want to schedule an appointment to see me or one of our doctors, call or text us. The number is on the screen. You can schedule online on our website. And if you're not in Bismarck, find somebody with the letters "CACCP" after their name at icpa4kids.org. CACCP is the letters that we receive when we've chosen to devote our lives to pediatrics and pregnancy. This is not something that every chiropractor has, but if you can find one close to you, that is going to be the one that you want to see.

So, I hope you guys learned something today about C-sections and the stressors that a baby has to go through to come into this world. It is an absolutely beautiful, wonderful thing. You moms are incredible. If me or other men had to do this, the entire civilization would die out in one generation. You are rockstars. We love you for what you do. Please keep it up. If you ever need help, we are always here for you. Please reach out to us. Have a great day.