Birth is a major event in your baby’s life. Did you experience giving birth as difficult, whether it was prolonged or very sudden? Your baby has their own experience. Even a birth that feels easy for mom can have big impacts on your baby, resulting in colic or breastfeeding problems.
What happened at birth?
Nature has designed baby’s heads to be malleable for birth, and allows for the bony plates to slide and overlap slightly to fit through the snug birth canal. However, the intensity of birth can jam the bones together, and the baby may not be able to shift her bones into any easy place. Compacted bones and fascia may restrict the vagus nerve that regulates the nervous system. One of the jobs of the vagus nerve is to transition the brain from the state of active & alert to rest & digest mode. If the vagus nerve is compromised, your child may be exhausted, wired and tired.
Some doctors & parenting advisors say that babies will eventually outgrow colic. But a child who can’t easily regulate their own states may turn into a toddler with tantrums. These continuous episodes in early childhood set up habit patterns in the nervous system as a baseline for how a child responds emotionally to stress, including simple stressors of daily life.
Babies and young children do need our help, comfort and understanding to learn how to make these fundamental changes in state from active/alert to rest & digest. But when the vagus nerve is restricted, the hurdles may be very high for all of you. Instead of an endurance marathon of inconsolable crying, parents can turn to craniosacral therapy.
Craniosacral therapy, with its light gentle touch, can release vagus nerve restrictions in the connective tissue and help cranial bones align with more ease. Together these natural shifts help babies recover from the intensity of birth. Then everyone can settle into easy rhythms of sleep alternating with activity.