Chiropractic care is quickly gaining popularity as a non-invasive and effective treatment for a wide range of conditions. If you are expecting, you may be wondering if chiropractic care is safe and effective for you. Or you may even wonder if chiropractic care could help your newborn. Is chiropractic care only for adults? I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Jessica Tagliarini, owner of Tagliarini Chiropractic in West Hartford, CT. She has been a chiropractor for 23 years, specializing in prenatal care for 19 years. She shared some of the benefits of prenatal chiropractic care and how chiropractic care can help your baby as well.
Why Prenatal Chiropractic Care?
Dr. Jessica became interested in prenatal chiropractic care after having a difficult delivery with her first child. “I had a really horrific first delivery with my first son,” she shared. “He was head down, but posterior, he was facing the wrong way… and the cord was around his neck.” She recalled it was 6.5 hours of pushing, suction, and forceps. “It was like everything, one step shy of a C-section,” she said, “I thought, I don’t want to experience that again… and I don’t want other moms to experience that.” After this experience, she learned about the Webster Technique. She and her husband both got certified and have been practicing this technique for 19 years. Her husband did the Webster Technique on her during her second pregnancy, and she delivered her eight-pound son in only three pushes. “I can totally testament to [the effectiveness of the Webster Technique]. Just a night and day experience.” Not only has she personally benefited from this care, but she has also seen the positive impact chiropractic adjustments have had on her patients. In particular, she has seen improvements in the
relief and prevention of pain, baby positioning, and an overall quicker, easier, and safer birth.
Symptom Relief and Prevention
Lower back pain, sciatica, hip pain, round ligament pain, and pubic synthesis pain are all common complaints of pregnant women. “Sometimes people come in with those symptoms already, and sometimes people come in with a subsequent pregnancy because they had them during their first pregnancy and they don’t want to get to that point,” Dr. Jessica says. If you are experiencing these pains, chiropractic care can help.
Pregnancy causes many structural changes in your pelvic region. Chiropractic care throughout your pregnancy can help to prevent many of the pains caused by these changes by maintaining the proper alignment of your spine and pelvic bones.
Baby Positioning
Pain isn’t the only thing that misalignments can cause. Most often it is a structural issue with mom’s pelvis that leads to breech, transverse, and posterior positioning of the baby. When you are out of alignment, your baby has less space to move around and may not flip into the right position. Breech, and other incorrect positions, frequently lead to C-sections. Chiropractic care during pregnancy can aid in proper baby positioning. “We actually don’t touch the baby at all. So, it’s very different from what the OB/GYN would do, which is an ECV (External Cephalic Version). What we do is we align the mom’s pelvis, the tailbone, and all the muscles and ligaments surrounding the uterus. By doing that, it actually makes more room inside the pelvis and the baby on its own can get and stay head down,” Dr. Jessica explained. In addition to making chiropractic adjustments, she also educates women on the behaviors that most often cause the misalignments, such as leg crossing or carrying a child on your hip. Such postures can cause the hip and pelvis to shift out of proper alignment. “We want to keep the pelvis and all the structures around the uterus as aligned as possible,” she says.
So, how soon should you start seeing a chiropractor during your pregnancy? Dr. Jessica recommends coming as early as possible, but by 32 weeks if you know the baby is likely to be in the wrong position. It can take 1-10 visits for the baby to flip, depending on how crooked mom is. So, the sooner you come in, the more time she will have to make the space your baby needs to move on their own. “There’s no ‘too early to start.’ The best way to do it is to prevent in the first place and just come periodically throughout the pregnancy and stay aligned,” she says.
Is there a point at which it is too late? Dr. Jessica has had patients come in a week before a scheduled ECV, and even some the day before they were due. Even one adjustment can have some benefits by giving the baby more room. “Typically, after the first adjustment, the mom will report that they felt the baby moving more… You don’t feel like a cartoon flip… Really, the baby is just wiggling around a lot because we just made more room,” she explained. Any chiropractor who is specifically treating pregnant women should be Webster Certified. This indicates they have received specialized training above and beyond normal chiropractic training and are certified through the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association. Nationally, the Webster Technique has an 85% success rate with correcting breech positioning. Personally, Dr. Jessica has a 90% success rate. “It’s super safe, super gentle, and has a super high success rate. So, in my opinion, this is where you should start. Most insurance covers it, so it’s like a no brainer,” she said. She also shared that for the 10% of her patients who don’t get the desired results and choose to do an ECV, the procedure goes much smoother. “It’s almost like you loosened the pickle jar for them,” she says.
Quicker, Easier, and Safer Birth
A noteworthy benefit of prenatal chiropractic care is a quicker, easier, and safer birth. As Dr. Jessica herself experienced, the difference between her first and second delivery was significant. She hears this from her patients as well. Because chiropractic adjustment ensure that mom’s pelvis, tailbone, and hips are properly aligned, delivery is often quicker and less complicated. Chiropractic medicine is a non-invasive, non-chemical treatment that is gentle and safe. Adjustments throughout your pregnancy will have lasting benefits for both you and your baby even up to the moments of delivery.
Benefits of Baby and Toddler Chiropractic Care
Many people wonder if chiropractic care is safe for babies. It absolutely is! Birth can be physically traumatic for the infant. Subluxations, the technical term for misalignments, can occur during delivery. “If you think of the birth process, they’re pulling the baby out using pounds of pressure… They’re pulling and they’re twisting the head because then next they need to get the shoulder out. So that top bone in the neck subluxate a lot of times at birth,” Dr. Jessica explained.
Chiropractic treatment for a newborn can realign the neck and spine in a safe and gentle manner. “Chiropractic care on a baby looks very different than on an adult. I’m using just my fingertips and I’m using just 3-7 ounces of pressure. So, it’s about the same amount of pressure you would use to dimple a tomato… very minimal pressure,” she explained. If your baby doesn’t like to turn their head in a particular direction, or perhaps doesn’t want to nurse facing a certain way, that may indicate a misalignment in their neck. Just a few visits to the chiropractor can result in improvements. Dr. Jessica also provides tips for how to encourage your little one to turn their head, such as nursing on that side first and providing stimulation on that side of their head. Chiropractic adjustments are also a great treatment for digestive issues such as colic, reflux, and constipation. Many babies are referred by dentists and lactation consultants for adjustments before and after lip or tongue-tie revision because this can help to speed recovery from the procedure.
Toddlers will also benefit from chiropractic care. If your child is suffering from chronic ear infections, chiropractic adjustments can reduce the need for antibiotics and ear tube surgery. Chiropractic is natural, gentle, and effective. Dr. Jessica says she sees a significant improvement in her young patients after adjustments.
Are You Ready to Give Chiropractic a Try?
Chiropractic has many benefits for both mom and baby. Are you ready to give it a try? Contact Dr. Jessica today to schedule your first appointment. Their office is very family friendly, with special spaces for moms with little ones, a kid-friendly staff, and equipment specially designed to meet the needs of pregnant women.
Be sure to watch the full interview with Dr. Jessica Tagliarini here. https://www.facebook.com/monica.davis.167/videos/817656250140548/?mibextid=zDhOQc
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