A baby being worked on by a chiropractor is something you might not expect to see.
“To take stress off the body, really and truly that's the bottom line. It's to remove stress that may have been put there through the birth process,” Dr. John Vincent with Chenal Chiropractic said.
One would argue since birth is a natural process and babies are flexible why would there be stress?
“I'm seeing a lot of moms throughout their pregnancy, they have misalignments in the hips and pelvis it actually puts a lot of constraint on the baby. So a lot of this isn't just the birth process, it's times before as the baby's in utero,” Dr. Vincent said.
Moms like Kara are convinced it works. Five-month-old Cole is getting chiropractic service.
“You see his little flat head here, we just kind of wanted a different alternative,” Kara said.
For the last three months Dr. Vincent has been working to re-shape Cole’s head. “I wasn't satisfied with the answer of you can do tummy time or you can put him in a helmet," Kara said. "So I had come to Dr. Vincent for some of my pregnancy and he said he said he was going to be working on some babies and I thought what the heck?”
Kara says it is working. According to Dr. Vincent, chiropractors can help babies in many ways including ear infections.
“We see a lot of kids with, like you said, ear infections, colic symptoms. A lot of kids on the ADD, ADHD and autism spectrum, just because we help integrate the nervous system, that's our goal to take stress out. If we can get their brain to integrate better with the therapies they're doing it really helps those individuals,” Vincent said.
Doctors at UAMS deliver and treat thousands of babies every year. Neonatologist Whit Hall warns if you think your baby is sick or was hurt during delivery, your first stop should not be a chiropractor.
“I don't think there's any question they should see a medical doctor, a pediatrician or an orthopedic surgeon to get an initial evaluation because these things can be quite severe and may require medical surgery,” Hall said.
Back at the chiropractic office, Dr Vincent doesn’t dispute that. But he also urges parents to consider his alternative remedies. “We're taking stress out of the body and letting it function as it should,” Dr. Vincent said.
Kara has no doubt she made the right choice for Cole no matter what other parents might think. “They're like, 'What? You take him to a chiropractor?' I say, 'Yes, and he's helped and he's obviously been improving.'”
