Newborn & Infant Care
Offerings:
Newborn Assessment
It is a healing priority to ensure your baby’s physiological development and recovery from birth are on track from the start. The assessment begins with briefly discussing information pertaining to the pregnancy and birth.
Next, your baby will receive a sequence of gentle contact referred to as body brain mapping that strengthens their midline and proprioceptive awareness (you will be able to do this at home).
Afterwards, we will go through the ATLFF™ screening
and assess your newborn baby independently and while nursing. The presence of a tongue-tie will either be detected or ruled out. The screening also provides useful insight to the CST practitioner regarding tension patterns in oral cavity and the whole body.
Breastfeeding should not be painful, therefore, we will
go over best posture and positioning practices for comfortable and optimal breastfeeding.
If your baby continues to struggle with suckling or it continues to feel painful for you after posture and positioning have been optimized, a craniosacral therapy treatment plan will be recommended in order to release strain patterns present in your baby’s body.
In certain cases, such as torticollis, chiropractic treatment may be recommended. A pro-active response to optimizing your baby’s health includes making sure tension and strain patterns are released sooner than later. The axiom “What fires together wires together” says it all. Alongside a treatment plan, some playful therapeutic “exercises” are recommended to do at home in order to sustain and strengthen the positive changes taking hold during sessions.
Infant Session
Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy is a supportive light touch treatment that can help baby’s body and emotional state unwind from any imprints left over from stressors during gestation, impact from intrauterine pressures, and their birth experience.
Some examples are problems with latching, the presence of a clenched jaw, torticollis, a misshapen head, ridging of the cranial sutures, injury, faux tongue-tie, preparing for a true tongue-tie revision, and post healing from a true tongue-tie revision, to name a few.
A secure attachment between an infant and parent(s)
or primary caregiver(s) is key to ensuring they feel safe, protected, lovable, accepted, and free to enjoy the flow
of life. These sessions can help deepen an already existing healthy attachment, strengthen a weakened attachment or help establish secure attachment.
Within the baby’s cellular makeup, physical and emotional trauma may have imprinted, especially
when the opportunities for healthy sequential bonding (prenatal and postnatal) got blocked, interrupted or missed. In this supported setting, infants are able to sense their difficulties being named, witnessed and acknowledged. The therapeutic touch and verbalization invites the body’s reorganization and the releasing of tension patterns, making way for increased freedom of movement to arise.
During these sessions, the aligning of both mother and baby’s nervous systems is regulated and settles together in a very similar way to what nature intended in the first hours after birth, between mother and newborn, skin to skin during the 9 instinctive newborn stages.
Christina creates and maintains a warm compassionate connection with parents and baby which helps to establish an environment that feels safe for them all. As she observes and listens, she supports their healing priorities through craniosacral touch and accurate reflection. Inviting reconnection where it may have gotten lost, this process helps build, strengthen and secure attachment within the whole family.
BCST is beneficial to both you and your baby in the treatment of
intrauterine, childbirth recovery, postpartum, & neonatal issues:
- Anxiety
- Attachment/Bonding interruptions
- Back labour
- Birth trauma
- Brachycephaly or Plagiocephaly
- Breastfeeding (suck, swallow, & breathe)
- Cescarean Birth trauma/recovery
- “Colic”
- Cord around neck
- Digestive problems
- Distress during labour
- Fast or long labour
- Tongue-tie assessment & faux tongue-tie treatment
- Forcep delivery
- Head misshapen at birth
- Hormonal imbalances
- Induction
- Infant Reflex Development issues
- Infant Reflux
- Injury
- Malpresentation
- Medicated birth
- Postpartum depression
- Pre and Post frenotomy
- Premature birth
- Recovery issues
- Ridging of suture lines
- Separation at birth
- Shock
- Sleep issues
- Suctioning/clearing of airways
- Surgical trauma
- Torticolis
- Vacuum extraction delivery