So we get a lot of questions about infant exams and infant chiropractic and so today
baby Naomi is gonna help show our audience what an exam looks like so we check head-to-toe what
we're checking for is range of motion of all the joints including the hip joints you do a lot of
orthopedic and reflex exams when needed we check the spinal mobility shoulders wrists ankles head
we'll check for some cranial fixations one of my favorite ways to palpate or check her spine
is just with her laying face up and my hands wrapped around underneath and we just slowly
check to see if there are any joint fixations here oftentimes I'm just looking for baby's
own response to pressure that gives us a lot of information about what's going on in her spine
the dura which is the covering of the spinal cord it's oftentimes sort of hitched up during utero in
utero and so there are a number of different ways that we check for tension and harder and most of
the time babies enjoy this exam a lot sometimes if we find something that's causing them discomfort
they'll react to that so some of the reasons babies come in to see us include constipation
reflux or spitting up torticollis which could be a neck rotation preference Naomi actually
has a slight preference to right rotation and we'll check that a little bit more specifically
we always want to check and see if she has the ability to move her head both ways I'm always
with her permission and consent and we can you use our little tiny hands to check her little tiny
bone in her neck other reasons babies might come in newborns may you see us nursing difficulties
is one of the main ones if they're inconsolable at all which may also be dubbed as colic or if
they have a trouble sleeping through longer than a half hour an hour we oftentimes want to check and
make sure their nervous system is not overloaded then we want to check her on her tummy there's a
number of ways we do that sometimes we like this position and just palpate her back this way this
okay the exam also includes taking off the onesie and checking different landmarks on the skin and
making sure there's nothing to alarm there but we'll do that off camera okay one more thing baby
one more important thing want to do a full and thorough cranial exam which
also involves looking inside her mouth filling her sucking reflex see if she'll
open for us so we can see there's more going on with her neck and so we'll cover
some of that in the next video for we'll do some adjustments on Naomi
and just check that ja
Wow so now we're gonna move on intestines treatment of baby Naomi one of the main things
she's only three weeks old two weeks old two weeks old so one of the main things we're gonna do is
not do what look like adult adjustments on this baby but she needs adjustments because there's
clearly some joint fixations in her spine so some of these adjustments just involve
me holding her in a position that I want her to be in and you can see that a lot of times her
body will move into a compensating position to even that out so that's what we're doing
right now is we're just going to be encouraging a little bit of neck rotation to the left which
is not her favorite position and this is all done with her a letting us move her if there's
ever any muscle tension or fighting against our resistance we would go with that we don't fight
against it so you can see she's really working to help me out here good and I can just slowly
feel that her head is turning to the right I've got my hand on a very specific contact
under her neck and she's she's just abled so nice and relaxed move her head to the left
which is great wanna do a little bit more on the cranial loosening we're gonna go back inside her
mouth bring her head to neutral and there's a number of ways to loosen up her cranial bones
she actually has a great suck not too hard and sometimes we do feel it's too hard
one thing I didn't mention in the prior video is facial asymmetry we often look to make sure
there's not a smaller eye or a flatness in the head and those are off obviously reasons to come
in and see a chiropractor as well she has a great back I'm looking for my trash can over there okay
now let's work on your dura so we're gonna check her low back her sacrum oftentimes the sacrum is
a little bit mal positioned in babies so I've got my hand underneath and I'm just doing some track
directional traction again her body is gonna move into the direction that makes her feel
better and get some relief and she doesn't seem to have well does she have spitting up issues I
don't think so but she don't so we're gonna check that mid-back and same thing here adjustments in
the mid-back just really have to do with really specific directional pressure so you just won't
see us thrusting into babies or feeling a lot of big popping noises but you will feel joint
mobility in them they're very very easy they respond very quickly to adjustments so mom
could notice after her adjustments today that she sleeps better longer she may nurse better
both sides she she really didn't have a whole lot coming in but a lot of times babies who've
been having constipation issues will go right after their adjustment those kinds of things
she's waking up so I'm also checking her diaphragm right now a lot of times there can be some things
we want to check in through there all right and that's about it for Naomi's first adjustment you