The Baby Pro Podcast

Nervous System Glitches and Your Baby with Dr. Martin Rosen July 6, 2022

 

Shelly:

Hi, I’m Shelly.

 

Nicole:

And I’m Nicole.

 

Shelly:

And you’re listening to The Baby Pro Podcast.

 

Nicole:

Where we talk about everything and anything related to pregnancy through the first year of your child’s life.

 

Shelly:

Every episode, we will discuss and interview experts on all the questions expectant and new parents want to know, such as creating the perfect birth plan, infant sleep, and tips and tricks for parenting a newborn.

 

Nicole:

Welcome to the show.

 

Shelly:

Hey, Nicole.

 

Nicole:

Hey there, Shelly.

 

Shelly:

How are you?

 

Nicole:

I’m good. How are you?

 

Shelly:

I am so glad that the warmer weather is here.

 

Nicole:

Oh, me too.

 

Shelly:

And the weather is just crazy, like you can’t make up its mind.

 

Nicole:

Right.

 

Shelly:

Did they tell you… It’s Hunter’s birthday, by the way, today.

 

Nicole:

Oh, cool. Happy birthday, Hunter.

 

Shelly:

I know. I’m really struggling with it because he’s turning 12.

 

Nicole:

Oh, my word.

 

Shelly:

I know. Because he’s my sweetest kid. So I’m like, “Oh, now puberty is going to hit him and he’s going to turn into a jerk, lik e all teenagers.”  jerks and I don’t want… Because you know when it’s your youngest and you’re like…

 

Nicole:

Yes.

 

Shelly:

You’re so sweet to me still when the other older kids are jerks.

 

Nicole:

Yes. They still love me. I get it.

 

Shelly:

I’m struggling with it. This morning, we always do the birthday punches. It’s stupid tradition. So I went to give him his 12 punches and one to grow on and I’m like, “This is too many.”

 

Nicole:

Right.

 

Shelly:

It’s so much better when it’s eight punches.

 

Nicole:

Right.

 

Shelly:

Or three.

 

Nicole:

Yes.

 

Shelly:

He’s in baseball. And the difference in skill between last year and… I don’t know. He went up to the next league and it’s amazing how much better skilled they are at this age.

 

Nicole:

Right.

 

Shelly:

Your kids played baseball, right?

 

Nicole:

Yes, my boys did, and I loved it.

 

Shelly:

I’m not going to lie. It takes up a lot of time. The games are two hours and then there’s practices and… I’m always stressed trying to get him there on time and everything. But once I get there and I settle into my… I bring my lawn chair, and it’s just something about listening to the crowd and they’re always serving burgers and hot dogs, and the sun is out, and-

 

Nicole:

I love it.

 

Shelly:

… even though it’s sunny. I know.

 

Nicole:

Oh, I love it.

 

Shelly:

And then he plays a lot of night games where the game starts at 7:30 so then they turn on the big lights and-

 

Nicole:

Yes. It’s Big League chew and sunflower seeds and… I love it.

 

Shelly:

Yep.

 

Nicole:

I miss those days.

 

Shelly:

Yeah. As stressed as I get about it, I know I’m going to miss it when… Because he’s the last kid. He’s the last kid. I’m like, “Oh, I should really just treasure this more.” But…

 

Nicole:

So special.

 

Shelly:

So we are going to be doing something different on this podcast. Instead of doing favorite of the week, we are just going to be talking about relevant news or happenings in the world that revolve around pregnancy and parenting.

 

Nicole:

Yeah.

 

Shelly:

And this week, we are going to talk about some exciting news. There’s been a huge breakthrough in SIDS research. Have you heard about this?

 

Nicole:

Yes. I just saw it.

 

Shelly:

Yep. Basically, SIDS is when a baby passes and we don’t know why.

 

Nicole:

Right.

 

Shelly:

They’ve been studying SIDS for a long time and they have suspected for years that it’s something that has to do with the part of the brain that controls arousal. Something is happening in that part of the baby’s brain where they’re unable to wake themselves up from a deep sleep when they have an episode where they stop breathing or something like that, and that’s always been like the leading theory.

 

The newest research shows that babies who have passed from SIDS have a lower level of a certain enzyme in their brain than other babies. This enzyme happens to create a really important pathway in the arousal part of the brain. So for whatever reason, these babies don’t have enough of this enzyme and they’re thinking that that’s what’s leading to SIDS.

 

It was a very small sample size, so definitely more research is needed, and this is just opening up the doors for better research, more pinpointed research because if we know exactly what to look for…

 

This is just one biomarker that can show if an infant is at risk versus or not. But we can develop tests to test and see what level of enzyme a baby has and if they are a little low in the enzyme, maybe there’s something we can do, or maybe there’s something that we can keep an eye on. And then if we know exactly… If it leads to us finding the exact cause of SIDS, maybe we can get back into more biological sleep with infants and not scare parents all the time about your baby has to sleep on their back all the time and never bed share and all that stuff.

 

It’s pretty exciting.

 

Nicole:

When my mother was a young girl, she lost a baby brother to SIDS, so I sent her the article because it was always a big thing in their family like why did this happen.

 

Shelly:

Right. Because parents just blame themselves when things like that happen, because you’re told… Even if you follow all the safe sleep guidelines that you’re given in the hospital and you’re taught, SIDS can just happen anyway. And a lot of parents will blame themselves like, “Oh, I did something wrong,” or “Maybe it was something I ate,” or “Maybe…” Now, it can offer reassurance that it wasn’t your fault, that it wasn’t something that you did wrong, that aspect of it too.

 

I’m excited to see what new research is going to come out from this and what we can learn about SIDS.

 

Nicole:

That’s right, yep.

 

Shelly:

All right. So let’s go to our question of the week.

 

Nicole:

Okay.

 

Shelly:

This week’s question is, “My six-month-old baby’s on a nursing strike. Do you have any suggestions for getting them to breastfeed again?”

 

Oh, man, those nursing strikes. It’s so hard.

 

Nicole:

Babies and toddlers have such a mind of their own. It’s really hard to get them to do anything they don’t want to do.

 

Shelly:

Nursing strikes are very common from… I wouldn’t say they’re very common but I would say it’s more common for them to occur between four and six months of age, because they just are going through these huge leaps and developmental leaps and growth spurts, and they’re just so busy, and they want to look around and they want to crawl, and they want to play with their toys, and it’s just so hard for them to focus and sometimes, these leaps can cause shifts in their body where maybe for some reason, they’re not as comfortable and they just can go on a nursing strike.

 

It’s really hard.

 

One common thing I’ve seen with the nursing strike is a lot of parents will say, “Well, if the baby is sleeping or sleepy, like in the middle of the night, they will feed fine, they will nurse just fine. But during the day, they just absolutely refuse to nurse.”

 

Nicole:

Yep, yep. I’ve heard that too.

 

Shelly:

Do you have any suggestions?

 

Nicole:

I think that moms need to take measures to keep themselves comfortable if they feel like they’re getting full, but I don’t feel like there’s much you can do with the baby other than those kinds of things, when the baby’s sleepy, just keep offering, spend time doing skin to skin but typically, they’ll come back to it.

 

Shelly:

Yep. Typically, nursing strikes are short-lived.

 

Nicole:

Right.

 

Shelly:

Typically being the key word there.

 

Nicole:

Right, exactly.

 

Shelly:

Because I don’t know, Nicole, these pandemic babies. I’m seeing so many more nursing strikes than I used to see.

 

Nicole:

Everybody’s going on strike. The babies too.

 

Shelly:

Yep, yep.

 

Another thing that you can try is to take a bath with baby. That can replicate the in utero environment and kick in their feeding reflexes. You can try to latch your baby while you’re in the bath.

 

This worked really well for a family of mine that I was working with that the baby started to refuse the breast and I suggested she take a bath and the baby latched in the bath and never looked back.

 

Nicole:

Right.

 

Shelly:

If you do take a bath with your baby, just make sure someone else is at home too to help you transfer the baby in and out of bathtub safely, because babies are slippery when wet.

 

Nicole:

That’s right. I know.

 

Shelly:

That was our question of the week.

 

If you have a question that you’d like us to answer, you can submit it to me on Instagram on @shellytaftibclc.

 

Up next, we have our guest, Dr. Martin Rosen. He is a chiropractor who is going to be talking to us about tongue-tie, TMJ in babies, and cranial distortions meaning like head molding, torticollis, things like that, flat spots and how they impact breastfeeding.

 

Nicole:

Excellent. That should be very interesting.

 

Shelly:

This week, we are speaking with Dr. Martin Rosen.

 

Dr. Rosen is a 1981 summa cum laude graduate of Life Chiropractic College. Since 1982, he has maintained a private practice in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Besides practice, he has traveled nationally and internationally teaching chiropractic technique, pediatrics, cranial adjusting, chiropractic philosophy, and practice management.

 

With his wife, Dr. Nancy Watson, they also run the Peak Potential Institute offering premier educational programs for healthcare professionals.

 

Their most recent book, It’s All in the Head, was written to inform and bring awareness to the implications of growth and development challenges in the early stages of childhood development. Their book empowers parents with the ability to understand normal developmental milestones and to recognize problems in the earliest stages, allowing them to seek appropriate care before problems become entrenched and create diagnosable disease processes.

 

Peak Potential Institute also offers other educational tools, including hands-on and online workshops and seminars, guest lectures, instructional videos, written books and articles, published research papers, and one to one interviews.

 

He is dedicated to giving chiropractors, healthcare providers, and parents a new perspective when it comes to children’s health.

 

As parents of two daughters, Drs. Rosen and Watson have been committed to helping other parents learn from their personal and professional experiences. Through their combined 80 years of teaching, writing, and clinical experience, they have brought a unique insight, motivation, and support to thousands of lay and professional individuals in numerous fields.

 

Welcome, Dr. Rosen, thanks so much for joining us.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Thank you, Shelly, for having me. I appreciate you taking the time to listen to what I have to say.

 

Shelly:

Can you describe in layman’s terms what it is you do?

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

So I’m a chiropractor.

 

Most people think of chiropractors as back, neck pain type of doctors but we actually specialize in pediatrics. And what our goal is actually to prevent things from happening.

 

As we know, with children, there’s a lot of traumatic episodes in their lives, sometimes including the birth process and that can cause stress to their spine, the cranium, and the nervous system, and our job is to find those stressors and remove them, either when they’re causing issues or before they cause issues, so that we can help facilitate optimal function in the health of the child.

 

Shelly:

Can you go into a little bit more detail what you mean by trauma from the birth?

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Okay.

 

Well, the easy way to think of it is C-sections, vacuum deliveries, forceps deliveries, those are all kind of traumatic experiences, but part of the process of the birth is going down the birth canal.

 

The reason that that happens is it creates molding in the cranium that primes the babies’ respiratory mechanism and breathing mechanism. That transition down the birth canal can also be traumatic depending on how rough it is, how long it is, how intense it is. Any type of stresses can cause trauma that the body can adapt to.

 

One of the main things that causes damage, I guess, to the child’s nervous system is actually traction.

 

If people think of chiropractors, they think of nerves being pressed on and compressed and that doesn’t usually happen to child, but stretching does happen. If you’ve ever seen a birth, a child depending on the birth, sometimes they’re really easy, sometimes they’re more difficult, sometimes more force is needed to bring the baby down the birth canal.

 

And it’s no different when someone brings a child to the pediatrician in the first couple of days to get things checked. Their weight, their height, breathing, all that.

Well, we check their spine and their cranium. We basically check that there’s no stress that’s occurred to the nervous system. Another way to quantify it is we talk about Apgar scores.

 

One of the reasons people take Apgar scores is to see how the birth affected the child. How is the child breathing? What was the child’s color? What was their respiratory rate?

 

If the Apgar scores are really low, that gives us a sense that the birth was a traumatic incident for the child, but if the Apgar scores are higher in the normal range, it’s less traumatic.

 

We’re always monitoring how the birth affected the child, obviously, as well as how it affected the mother. And again, our job as chiropractors is to determine how that birth affected the structures that protect the central nervous system.

 

Shelly:

As a doula and as a lactation consultant, I see a lot of babies where the birth may not have had a lot of trauma, but even if you have a birth that doesn’t have a lot of trauma, I still wouldn’t say it’s gentle. It’s not a gentle process on the parent or the baby even if everything goes as expected. Still a lot of twisting and turning.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Exactly.

 

You see that … on them. You see some babies that come out that are very relaxed, they nurse easy, they come out easy, then there’s other babies that the birth looks like but they’re very tense and very tight. They have trouble connecting.

 

So the trauma, for lack of a better term, can be happening in utero during the whole process and then when the baby comes out, babies start to feel pain and pleasure by the third trimester. They already can differentiate between that while in utero and what’s happening outside of the womb is also affecting their growth and development. So yeah.

 

Or a position in the womb. It may be an easy birth but maybe the baby was held up against the pubic bone for a long time. Maybe the cord was too tight.

 

We just had a mom who delivered a baby that the cord was actually wrapped twice around the baby’s neck when the baby came out. Now, the baby came out, she went to term, there was no problems during pregnancy. They had no idea when the baby came out, the baby was blue because the cord was wrapped around the neck and they took the cord off the neck and the baby’s “fine,” but yeah, that was a traumatic birth of the baby, even though everything on paper, except for that cord, looked good. So you’re right.

 

Everybody has a different experience when it comes to the birth.

 

I’ve, obviously, never given birth but I’ve seen a number of them, not as many obviously as you but yeah, they don’t look like, “Oh, that was an easy thing.” “Oh, that went well.” It always looks like it’s a difficult process.

 

Shelly:

Sometimes, I wonder if it wasn’t for their natural reflexes, they would just be shell shocked after such a huge transition.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Oh, you talking about the babies? They’re totally-

 

Shelly:

Yes.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Shelly:

Yeah.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

That’s the whole thing of primal reflexes, their survival mechanisms. Yeah, right. If they weren’t there, they’re… Can you imagine that being in a womb, safe, protected, fed, warm, taken care of for nine months and then totally thrust into the world and depending on whether…

 

Could be a home, it could be a hospital, there could be people standing around, yeah, I can’t imagine what that imprinting does to your nervous system because your nervous system is so susceptible in those first two years of life. It’s growing fast than it’ll ever grow again in your life. It’s basically just taking in input, taking in input. It’s amazing imprinting process.

 

Shelly:

Right.

 

One of the things that I see families struggle with is this isn’t something that pediatricians or other providers are often trained to pick up on, and so they may think that everything’s fine.

 

If I’m helping a baby with breastfeeding, one, I usually ask about the birth but one of the questions is, “Well, how long did it take you to push the baby out?” If it’s vaginally.

 

I’m almost completely correct with my guesses because the babies who just come flying out where the moms are like, “Oh, one push and he came out.” They’re always with like this but their shoulders up by their ears, and they have a flex posture that they can’t extend their neck and it’s just… Unless someone is connecting those dots for the families, it’s not something that they pick up on.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Well, think of the word. The word is called transition.

 

It’s a transition period from the uterus into the birth canal, is the transition phase of labor.

 

When you think of transitions in your life, just take your life… People move. Kids go to different schools. There are all these transitions in life, and depending on how traumatic that transition is or how you process it. So you’re right.

Part of the thing they did a study on, I think it was 2015 in England about… They tracked about 100 different births and they evaluated the kids after about 6 to 72 hours regardless of the type of birth.

 

What they found is that the transition period had a greater effect on how well that child was functioning within 6 to 72 hours. Sometimes, it’s too slow and they’re trapped in there too long and then, just like you said, sometimes, these babies shoot out. Imagine that. That’s a transition.

 

It’s trying to think if you put your house on the market thinking, “Oh, I have a couple of months to get it together.” Someone comes along and buys your house and says, “I want you out in a week.” Can’t imagine how much stress that is and it’s…

 

So the baby’s having the same process. It goes from the womb to the real world in maybe 20 minutes, instead of an hour and 15 minutes, or whatever time frames. And so you’re right.

 

And those babies, they definitely come out what we call guarded. They’re in this tense state. They’re guarded because they just literally came out so fast and so intense.

 

I want to show you something I brought here.

 

This is a baby’s head. This is a 33-week-old. Obviously, they don’t come in different colors but they have these sutures, all these soft spots that you feel in your baby’s head.

 

The whole idea of this cranium as compared to an adult’s head is that this cranium can compress on itself. So it does two things. During the birth canal, as it comes down, it compresses and then within the next 7 to 10 days, it should decompress and be normalized.

 

One of the things as chiropractors that we’re trained to do is to check that, to make sure that when the compression occurs and when the decompression occurs that it normalizes.

 

A lot of times you’ll see babies come out. It’s very common you’ll see things like flat head syndromes or plagiocephaly, and they often don’t develop till around three or four months… Or I shouldn’t say developed, aren’t diagnosed at three or four months.

 

We’re trained to actually see the underlying issue that may be causing that to occur before you actually see the symptoms of it.

 

And the other thing you talked about, as a lactation consultant, you see these babies are real tense.

 

One of the things that you can tell if there was trauma to the neck when the babies come out is… Let’s say the baby likes to nurse more on one breast than the other and you can’t figure out why. The reason may simply be that the baby’s neck has been slightly injured and it’s easier for them to turn one way or the other, but they’re not telling you that.

 

When you’re an adult, you say, “You know it hurts when I turn to the right. I can easily turn to the left.” You can rationalize it.

 

With a baby, they’re in survival mechanisms, so they’re just going to get into a position, whatever that position may be, to make them comfortable and to be able to get sustenance.

 

Those are signs that parents can look at.

 

Does my baby’s… Can they lift their head up? Do they turn their head equally to one side? Do they like to nurse equally or one side? Can they hold onto a nipple for a long enough period of time?

 

I’m sure you talk to people about tongue-tie, lip tie, and buccal ties. That’s another thing us chiropractors we look for. The medical profession does tend to look for it now because it’s become so prevalent.

 

And they shouldn’t look for all these things just like I don’t. I don’t do a PKU test on your baby. That’s not within my ballpark. I don’t do that kind of stuff.

 

I may measure baby’s head. I’ll check their spine for motion. I’ll check these cranial bones to make sure that they’re normal, and I’ll check their vital responses, and I’ll check their primal reflexes, and as they get older, we’ll check for their milestones, because those are all part of the nervous system, which is what we’re actually dealing with.

 

That’s the thing that people don’t understand about chiropractors. Yeah, we may use the bones as a way to get to the nervous system, but what we’re really focused on is the actual function of the nervous system and to make that optimum.

 

Again, if you can reframe that that it’s not like, “Oh, yeah, your baby doesn’t have a back problem.” Well, what if your baby’s constipated because part of the nerves in the lower back that innervate the intestines aren’t working right and the intestines aren’t contracting right. Maybe that’s why the baby’s crying.

 

I just had a little boy brought in, actually, was referred by a medical doctor because he’s had chronic constipation for over a year now but he’s not complaining about his low back, but when we evaluated him, he had some problems down there. They had tried diet and they had tried Metamucil and laxatives and all that, and none of it works. So we’ll see.

 

But it’s not uncommon to find some imbalance in the spine that’s affecting the nerves, that affects how the organs work, and then when we change that, it changes the way the body could adapt and function.

 

Shelly:

Why do you think sometimes the symptoms for whatever issue is going on doesn’t show up until later, like that, three months?

 

I do get a lot of parents when I’m trying to explain like, “This is why your baby is struggling with this,” they don’t believe me, in a way, because they’re like, “This is a new thing. This hasn’t been happening since birth.”

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Let’s take nursing because that’s a really good one, because that happens a lot of times.

 

The day will start out nursing really well and then what happens is, somewhere around three or four months, they stop being able to nurse as well. Several things can be happening there.

 

The number one thing that usually happens is if you check inside a baby’s palate.

 

I’ll just use this, the big guy, for a minute.

 

You look inside of a baby’s mouth. The palate is actually divided by four separate bones. It has motion.

 

There are also what you talk about is gag reflexes or sensitivity in the palate. Very often the back part of the palate is slightly more sensitive than the front part of the palate because the way it moves and because of innervation.

 

But what happens with babies is as they get older, that sensitivity should decrease because what’s going to happen is as a baby starts to nurse and as they get stronger, which is around three to four months, they start to suck the nipple further back into the mouth.

 

If that palate is abnormal or still hypersensitive, when they suck the nipple back stronger because now they’re three months old and they’re getting good at it, they actually get a slight gag reflex, or they’ll pull their head off, or they’ll find it uncomfortable, and they’ll stop nursing or they won’t nurse as well.

 

Again, it’s a process. It was an underlying issue that was there. It didn’t manifest itself because the baby wasn’t basically strong enough to suck back there and that’ll cause a problem.

 

Also, we are what you call fault-tolerant individuals, so we compensate.

 

Just like adults, if you hurt your arm, you know, the first thing you’re going to do is see if it goes away. You’re going to… And if it doesn’t go away, you’re going to keep using it, especially if you’re a mom, you’re going to keep pushing until you can’t do it again, until it breaks down.

 

Well, babies have an internal survival mechanism. They’re going to do the same thing.

 

When you get in the first year or so of life and every three months, there’s huge neurological changes. So if there’s a glitch somewhere, sometimes, it doesn’t show up until the next level of neurological change occurs.

 

You have a baby, let’s say, who has difficulty lifting their head and they still can’t lift their head all the way by three months. Well, by three to four months, when they should be turning over, they’re not going to be able to turn over. And then if they can’t turn over, that’s going to affect their emotional and social interaction.

 

And then you’re going to have a different child than you have on this one. You can have a child that’s irritable, that’s frustrated, that’s very tense because they can’t do the things that’s already preprogrammed into their system. That’s often why it happens.

 

Also, different levels of the nervous system are called on to work more as we get older and older and older.

 

For example, let’s talk about the front of the head, we call the prefrontal cortex. That’s your decision making center but that doesn’t cue until later on. You’re not really using it till two, three years of age and you’re all reflexive. Well, if there’s a glitch and it’s not getting the proper input when it’s supposed to cue in, it doesn’t cue in.

 

For example, retained reflexes. That’s part of that whole idea. By the age of two, all those primal reflexes should be gone because now you should be able to cognitively understand that you don’t need all these primal reflexes. When you hear a sound out there, “Oh, mommy dropped a pot.” You don’t have to get startled all the time.

 

That area doesn’t kick in then what’s going to happen is what the baby look pretty normal up to a certain point, when they get to the point where they have to call in more of their nervous system, more of their resources, that’s where the system breaks down. That’s where we get a disease process or a diagnosis. But it was the compensation patterns underneath that eventually got to the point where, “Oh, now I can’t compensate anyone. Now, I have a symptom.”

 

Shelly:

Right, right.

 

Or in other cases, it’s the disappearing of those or the integration of those reflexes. A lot of times, we’ll have babies who all of a sudden at three, four months, they just start rejecting the bottle.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Yeah.

 

Shelly:

And they always have super high funky palettes that are super sensitive and the parents are always like, “Well, the baby always took a bottle up to this point.” But that’s about when the time they lose their sucking reflex.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Right, exactly.

 

Shelly:

So they can decide more on what they actually want to suck on and what’s comfortable for them to suck on versus having that reflex override their decision making process.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Right, exactly.

 

That’s why the reflexes are preprogrammed to come and go at specific times, so that you can adapt at different times to the stress or to the input that’s being put upon you from the outside world. That’s the whole idea of those reflexes to disappear and change and milestones. That’s it. So you’re right exactly. Especially…

 

You see kids are extremely, extremely ticklish. Everybody thinks, “Oh, that’s really funny. They’re really hypersensitive. Oh, it’s really funny.” But the problem with being hypersensitive like that is that’s showing you that there’s a nervous system that’s hypersensitive and in the midbrain where all that stuff happens, the pain centers and the pleasure sensors are right next to each other.

 

And so what happens is if you start to get kids that are really hypersensitive, they get older, they may actually become more sensitive to pain and those are setting up thing for chronic pain syndrome or things like that.

 

The nervous system is moderated. It has two sides. It has a sympathetic and parasympathetic. One side is called the fight or flight and the other side is the rest and digest. The idea is that these two are supposed to work together and if there’s an imbalance, then exactly what you said will happen. If that sympathetic fight or flight system doesn’t shut down when it’s supposed to and the parasympathetic kicked in, then you have basically a hypersensitive kid that everything’s going to start to bother them.

 

Everything becomes more sensitive. They get sensitive to texture. They will only wear certain clothes because it’s uncomfortable on their skin and you’re going to go, “Well, when my baby was two months old, I could put anything on them. Now, my kid’s 18 months old and won’t wear this shirt because it’s scratchy.”

 

It’s because their system has become sensitized and nothing has changed that sensitivity. It’s showing up when they can, just like you said, start to use their cognitive decision making process, “Hey, I don’t like that.”

 

Shelly:

You mentioned earlier about tongue-ties. We know that bodywork can be super helpful for babies with oral restrictions. How does doing bodywork benefit a baby with ties, and how does it benefit a baby who’s going in for a release?

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Again, we’re setting up a paradigm.

 

One of the things that’s important about the tongue being able to move is that when the baby sucks, they have to put their tongue up against the palate and it actually helps the palate grow. That pressure.

 

So every time you breathe in and out, your body expands and contracts. If you think of the tongue and you think of what we call fascia which are attachment points to the muscles and the bones, so the tongue in that whole palate is a fascial plane.

 

If it’s not moving right, one of the things you’ll see with babies if they’re tongue-tied, especially with an anterior tonguetie, they can’t get their tongue out, is that it doesn’t allow the jaw bone to move out correctly. Those are kids on trouble nursing because they can’t get their jaw out correctly.

 

And if you look at little babies like that, you see a very deep crease sometimes under the jaw because their jaws pulled backwards. It’s what you might call a weak chin, is what we used to call it.

 

The ability of the tongue to move also affects the way the jaw moves. It also affects the way the palate is formed. And so babies… Even if it’s something like colic.

 

If a baby can’t get their tongue up the palate against the mother’s nipple and make a flat, secure latch, then what happens is they’re going to be sucking air at the same time that they’re nursing. And when they suck air, it fills their stomach, it creates pressure in their stomach and gas and that’s one of the causes of colic, is that they can’t get that up there.

 

In my world, we look at three levels of tongue-tie. We look at an anterior, which is the very tip. We look at the middle and we look at a posterior.

 

What we do whenever a child has a tongue-tie is we judge the function of their tongue as well, because that little piece of skin that attaches to the tongue is stretchable and it’s pliable.

 

So what you have to do is you have to check the ability of the jaw to move forward and back, to move left and right. You have to check the ability of their tongue to be able to seal in all places on the palate and you have to then be able to check the size and height of the palate. Is it too narrow? Does one side drop? If those parameters are in there and they’re not changing, then you may actually have to have revision.

 

But what we do as chiropractors, what bodyworkers do, is we try and set up those normal parameters. We try and facilitate those normal growth patterns, even with the tongue being tongue-tied at that point in time.

 

Prior to the tongue-tie, we’re going to set up normal parameters. So when the tongue-tie is done, if there’s revision, they have a better foundation for which to move. It makes it easier, much less of a chance…

 

Matter of fact, we’ve never had a kid who’s reattached and I’ve been practicing for 40 years because of the bodywork that we do, we make sure that that is processed.

 

Also, in some cases, a tongue-tie revision may not be necessary and the bodywork will actually make all the functional changes, and the child will then be able to basically use their tongue in a proper manner, even though it looks like there’s a slight tongue-tie there.

 

Depends, again, where it is. If it’s an anterior tongue-tie, honestly, if it’s at the very tip of the child, can’t get their tongue out but it becomes heart shaped when they take it out, or it only goes down. I always have those. I always suggest those be revised because those are not going to change. But when you get back further back, then very often you can reduce the need for those particular procedures.

 

And the bodywork again does two things. It helps set up a normal parameter. So if the revision has to occur, then the adaption is much easier and there’s much less chance of it reattaching again. And if you’re on the borderline where it may not be necessary, then the bodywork can actually create normal functional capability and that the tongue-tie will no longer need to be revised, because the child can do everything normally and the functionality and patterns will change normally.

 

Shelly:

That’s one of the things that I’ve noticed with working with families here, and I know that you’re local to me, is a lot of times they’ll come see me after the tie was released because nothing’s getting better and-

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Right, exactly.

 

Shelly:

… that’s because the asymmetry and the tightness and the tension was never addressed. Of course, the tongue movement’s not going to change.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

It’s also about re-patterning.

 

You have to understand that everything that you do is mitigated through your nervous system.

 

If you set up a pathway, we talk about neuroplasticity which is the ability of the body to change, well, neuroplasticity could be negative too. In other words, you can create a negative neurological pattern and if the child has done that with a tongue-tie, let’s say, and even when they get it cut, they’re still going to be using the tongue in the same way. So what we do is help facilitate a more positive pattern.

 

Again, that happens with people. An injury. If you have a leg injury, an arm injury, a back injury, whatever it is, you’ve been dealing with it for months and months and you go to a chiropractor, you already make compensatory changes. When we make our corrections or adjustments, not only remove the joint pain or stabilize the spine, but we also retrain the spine, the muscles of the nervous system, to react back normally again so number one, the process doesn’t occur again and number two, you’re no longer compensating.

 

With infants, you have to do the same thing.

 

You’re thinking if a child’s two months old and for the first month of their life they had a tongue-tie and they were compensating for it, that’s half their life that they made compensation. So you have to restore normal patterns also. So that’s part of the issue.

 

That’s why people who do your type of work, you help retrain them. That part of the job is, yeah, I got the tongue-tie, I got the lip tie, got the buccal tie, got it all cut, and my child still can’t nurse. Well, your child doesn’t know that.

 

Shelly:

Right, right.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

The child didn’t know that things really got much change.

 

I’ve seen kids, older kids when they get a tongue-tie revision and they start to play with their tongue a lot more, but those kids are seven, eight months old or even… I’ve had kids four or five years old who haven’t had it done, but as they get older, they get more aware of it.

 

You’ll see this little baby I just had. We actually ended up having to have a revision and she, I think she’s about six months old and when she comes in now, it’s been about 10 days since the time of the revision and she just plays with the tongue now. She’s sticking it out and pulling it out, and she’s able to nurse and feed better. It is working.

 

But you can see her. She’s playing with the tongue. She’s becoming aware of it. She comes in, she sticks it out, she rolls it, and it’s very cute. That’s also very useful.

 

Shelly:

Right.

 

And that’s usually something I explained to parents when we’re talking about whether to go for a release or not, is that the release will give them the ability to move their tongue but we would have to teach them how.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Exactly.

 

Shelly:

Like if you train for a marathon with your shoes tied together by their shoelaces for nine months and then someone came in and untie them-

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Exactly the same. Right. Exactly.

 

Shelly:

… you could technically run better but you’d probably fall flat on your face.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Right. You would. And you wouldn’t know what to do with your body.

 

Yeah, no, that’s true. That’s definitely part of the process. It’s retraining, it’s preparation, and it’s setting up a parameter where they no longer have to compensate for the issue that they may have been compensating before.

 

If you have a posterior tongue-tie, in most cases, you can adapt to that very well. But like you said, sometimes, they’ll get it cut and they’ll come in and there’s no change and you go in and you palpate the palate, you see that the palate’s very distorted but still very high and narrow, and because it’s so narrow and high that when they nurse, they still can’t make a seal. `They still can’t get the tongue all up against it, so something has to be done to help open up that palate so that they can again seal even if their tongue is working better.

 

Shelly:

Okay. And that’s something that you do as a chiropractor?

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

That’s what we do.

 

Again, when you look at these cranial bones and even the spine babies, they have a high amount of mobility. And so what we do is what we call making adjustments.

 

But the adjustments are much different in pediatrics than they are with adults and it’s a specialty that we use. What we’re really doing when we’re making a correction is we’re facilitating the body to go into the direction or area we want to do.

 

But what we’re doing in infants, more often than not, is changing what we call the tension in the dura. The dura is the attachment that protects the spinal cord, attaches to the bones, and it literally attaches inside the cranium, over the brain, comes out through the suture the skull that forms part of the bony surface of the head, and attaches all the way down to the tailbone.

 

If you think of cord that’s tied to the child’s tailbone and then tied in the child’s head, that cord determines how much tension is in the cranium or in the spine. What we try and do is find those points in that cord that are too tight and release them so that we can get a balanced tension in the dura, it affects the nerves, it affects the bones, it affects the fascia, it affects the muscle because the whole system is interrelated.

 

Shelly:

Of course, people are not calling me because things are going well. They call me because they’re having trouble. But I can’t remember the last time that I did a oral assessment on a baby that did not have a high or asymmetrical palette.

 

I don’t know if you can answer this, but how long does it take to correct the palette on average when you’re working with a baby?

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Well, the simple answer is the sooner, the easier.

 

All these little soft spots that I just pointed in her head, usually the biggest one, which is the top of the head, at the longest period of time that it stays open is 24 months. Usually, the average is seven to 19 months.

 

Then these little ones on the side, the one back here is 18 months, and the one over here is 15 months.

 

So the further…

 

And then one back here. This is when they close the fastest is two to four months.

 

The point I’m making around that is the closer we are to the time when these are going to close and form the sutural system, the longer it takes to make the change.

 

For example, an average I will tell a parent who comes in, let’s say, in the first three months that it’ll take about 3 to 5 months to make this process happen, then it may go to 6 to 8 months and that’s usually what time frame we usually get.

 

That 6 to 8-month period of time, that doesn’t mean we see you every day. 6 to 8 months, I may see you once every week or once every two weeks. It depends on what we find underneath that.

 

But again, just two things are happening. It’s not like you take a bone and you move it. What we’re doing was changing the tension on the bone, so allow it to grow faster.

 

Again, in the first year of life, the brain’s growing 101% of the time, another 15% in the second year. So the growth of the brain is why these sutures are open to allow the head to expand, so that window of opportunity starts to get smaller and smaller after age two.

 

So again, average 3 to 4 months, sometimes 6 to 8 months. And again, they’re not daily visits. They may be weekly or maybe every other week. It all depends on how well the child responds to what we do and how much distortion we find.

 

Shelly:

But I also think it depends on what’s going on at home too.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Well, of course.

 

Shelly:

If the babies are putting containers all the time, or are they being held more? Are they getting the right amount of tummy time? All that stuff.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Yeah. Well, that’s extremely important. That was a really good point.

 

Parents have a lot to do. The last two years, in my opinion, has been extremely stressful on parents. I’d see more stressed parents and babies than I’ve ever seen before in my 38 years before this of life and they’re just so… That’s the point.

 

And right. Children need to have good input. If the child’s in a car seat all the time, it goes from a car seat to a stroller to a carrier, to lying on their back at night, yeah, that’s going to cause stress. That’s going to be a high propensity for things like flat head syndrome.

 

Tummy time is extremely important because not only does it strengthen the neck muscles, but it allows the child to move around, to turn their head, to actually start to see the world and take in more information. That’s important time, yeah, and all those milestones are extremely, extremely important.

 

Also, the other thing is… I know we had a baby food shortage recently but the bottom line is what you’re feeding your baby makes a huge difference to how they’re able to eat. If you’re looking at a formula and you turn it around and look at the back of the formula and it looks like a chemical equation and there really doesn’t seem to be any food in it, there probably isn’t and that can be causing an issue as well.

 

We have to find things that is satisfying for baby to eat, that’s fulfilling, that doesn’t cause them to have to compensate to get nourishment.

 

Shelly:

I’m glad you brought up the last two years because I have felt that I’ve noticed the same thing.

These pandemic babies are so tense and their parents, of course, were like, “Oh my gosh, my three-day-old baby’s already rolling over. They’re an overachiever,” and having to explain to parents, “Well, that’s not actually a good thing to have your three-day-old baby rolling over already. That’s not what we would consider normal.”

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Well, it’s insane.

 

Right at the base of the brainstem, it’s called the brainstem but also an area called the cerebellum, and that’s a processing center for everything. The first year of life, that grows 240%.

 

The reason for that is because that’s where all the information gets processed. Throughout generations and generations and generations, there are what we call preprogrammed proprioceptive feedback loops. It’s a big name. But basically is that your reflexes, your developmental milestones all that are preprogrammed into the system.

 

And there’s some variants, but you’re right, a baby rolling over and flipping over at a week old is not a genius, it’s a problem. A baby who goes from sitting to standing, and this is crawling, “Oh, my baby’s a genius. Never had to crawl.” No, that’s a problem. He’s preprogrammed and they’re designed to help the nervous system develop, specifically the way human nervous system develop.

 

It’s like if you’re an animal in the wild. When animals in the wild are born, they don’t have to wait 12 months to walk because if they had to wait 12 months to walk, they would be eaten by predators. So they’re preprogrammed to be able to get up and walk within a couple of hours at the most. If that breaks down, then they die and what…

 

Obviously, kids are much more protected. It’s not going to be that drastic.

 

But you’re right. That means that something in their nervous system that was supposed to be programmed correctly is not normal and again…

 

And it’s a great thing that we talk about it in the book that my wife and I wrote, It’s All in the Head, is we talk about the difference between what’s common and what’s normal. Just because it’s happening all the time, especially these last two years that the pandemic we’re seeing a lot more symptoms that are becoming common, they’re definitely not normal and we really have to be careful about normalizing things, because they’re happening a lot.

 

Shelly:

Right, right.

 

So if you are a parent and you don’t have any training, what are signs that you can look for that your baby might need some help and some bodywork?

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Well, again, the stuff that you see all the time. Difficulty nursing, inability to pick their head up within the first month, not wanting to do tummy time, always seem very, very tense and tight, having extremely erratic sleep patterns of not able to self soothe themselves at all.

Other digestive issues, chronic constipation type of thing and diarrhea.

 

Cramping, screaming, pulling their legs up too tight, or… And that’s the tighter end.

 

The other end is being too flaccid, in other words, not being able to lift their arms. When you put your fingers near their hands, if they can’t grasp you, there’s no grasp reflex and no ability to do that.

 

If you’re watching your baby and it looks like their eyes don’t follow you when you walk around the room or if their eyes don’t track, that’s a problem.

 

Those are some of the other things that we see.

 

If they always like to favor one side, they don’t want to turn in to another side, or if they sit in a car seat, and every time they’re in the car seat, they sit like this all the time, they never pick their head up. Those are other type of things that you look at.

 

As they get older, again, the milestones. If they’re not able to sit up like somewhere around six months or not even trying, that’s a problem. If they don’t try and creep and crawl somewhere between seven and nine months, again, that’s a problem that you want to be looking at.

 

Also, a baby is… I have some kids that come in and the parents, “Oh, he’s great. He could turn from his stomach to his back, but he can’t turn from his back to his stomach.” That’s not good.

 

Or he always turns to the right side. He never turns to the left side.

 

Those are all little glitches that are becoming more common as babies get stressed. But those are not normal and those are usually signs that there’s some kind of compensatory process occurring and that you should get your child checked.

 

Shelly:

I also think the parents who say, “Oh, he hates the car seat. He screams when he’s in the car-”

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

He screams in the car seat. Exactly. That’s another one.

 

Shelly:

That’s a big red flag for me. Or sleeping with the mouth open all the time.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Right. Mouth breathers. Yeah, those are really good ones. Exactly. Yeah.

 

And then if you start to see… A lot of times, you’ll see one eye socket looks smaller than the other. Well, if you’ll notice your baby’s jaw always deviates to one side again… That’s the same thing, if you like to nurse more on one side than the other. You start to see distortions in baby’s face.

Again, part of the reason that we wrote the book, It’s All in the Head, is because we went shopping, we’re at a seminar, and we didn’t bring our baby doll with us that we use for demonstration and we went to a Toys R Us, or one of those type of stores, and all the baby dolls…

 

She was like, “Look at all these baby dolls. They look so weird. Their faces are all distorted.” I’m like, “Well, that’s normal.” It’s like when I was growing up, you know Barbie dolls, like, “Wow, look at all these bodies. They’re perfect.” That’s not normal. She started noticing all these babies’ faces and heads and stuff looked weird with her processing. When you start to look around, you can see these distortion patterns.

 

It’s so different when you walk down the street, you see some person looking and go, “Wow, that person must be hurting. Look how they’re limping.” You already think about that.

 

Well, your baby crying does the same thing. They can’t use their right arm as well. Eventually, you pick right hand and left handed. But when you’re a baby, you should be able to grasp with both hands.

 

You should be able to look both ways. And those are the kind of things that we look for.

 

And you’re right. Those sleeping patterns are very common that you see and that they… Going from a car seat to a stroller to a carrier and one of those things the child really hates, that’s a problem usually.

 

There’s a possibility that that particular ergonomics of that carrier might be off for them but more often than not, it’s because there’s some kind of problem and that’s it. That’s definitely a red flag.

 

Shelly:

Yeah. My colleagues and I joke all the time. Once you know what to look for, the more we learn about what to look for and the structural issues, the more you can un-see it when you’re just in a room with a bunch of kids and you’re just noticing all these issues that are happening and nobody else seems to notice.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

I had a student once call me. I had noticed her for a very long time and she said to me, she goes, “Dr. Rosen, I hate you.” I said, “Well, that’s nice.” And she goes… She ended up going to chiropractic. She was a student… She took my class but I had known her before that and she’d gone to chiropractic and she goes, “I used to think babies were so cute. Now, every time I see them, all I see is what’s wrong with them.”

 

Shelly:

Yeah. I have the issue when I look at pictures.

 

My kids are a lot older now. They’re in their teens, but when I look back at pictures of them as babies, I’m like, “Holy crap.” I did not see my son’s jaw was like … He almost looks like a little stroke victim.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Well, that’s…

 

When we teach pediatrics, we have a certification program and once we get into the cranial part and what we call visual analysis, we have a whole section on how to analyze a face and what’s going on.

 

People start looking at other people in the classrooms like, “Oh my God, I have this.” And they’ll come up to me in the classroom, “Dr. Rosen.” I’m like, “Look, it’s too late for you. You’re 40 years old. Just go sit down and relax. That’s where your body is compensated. Well, we’re not going to change that right now. And that’s not what this visual analysis is about. It’s about catching it before the whole system solidifies and codifies. And that’s the whole idea. The earlier you can catch it, then much more change we can make.”

 

Shelly:

Just like with any provider, including lactation consultants, they’re not always created equal.

 

Even though there are bodyworkers in my area that say that they work with infants, I don’t refer to them because, for some reason, I feel like they just don’t get the same results as other bodyworkers. Can you explain why that is and how you would find like a bodyworker that knows what they’re doing?

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

The simple fact is it’s true in every profession across the board. You can have a good dentist, you can have a good lawyer, you can have a good medical doctor, a carpenter. Health care workers, bodyworkers are no different.

 

One of the reasons we create a certification program is that we monitor the people who take our courses. They have to set a certain sets of parameters and goals and if they reach those parameters and goals, then we go on our website and at least we know that they have the skill set and we check it and do that.

 

In the general population, it’s hard now because honestly, marketing is the key that most people build their practice on and the better the marketer they are, the better they get people in. So it’s really hard to wade through their marketing to find out what they do.

 

With chiropractors, like I said, we have referrals. You can go on our website, which is drmartinrosen.com and we have our certification there.

 

There’s another group of people called the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association. You can look at…

 

There’s also another group called the International Chiropractors Association. It’s a pediatric branch. So if you go to some of the different organizations, they will have pediatric branches and people taking their certification classes. So that’s one way to do it.

 

If you’re calling around, you can simply say, “Hi, do you take care of kids?” “Oh, yeah, we take care of kids.” Just ask a simple question. “What percent of your practice is children?” They say, “Well, 5%.” Well, then you don’t really take care of kids. You get an occasional kid in once in a while.

 

The best way, obviously, is through referrals.

 

And every practitioner, and I’m sure it’s in your profession and it’s every profession, every practitioner has a certain different way of doing what they do. So we may all have the same goal and…

 

There are different techniques in chiropractic. There’s probably 120 different techniques, ways to make adjustments, just like if you go to medical doctor, there’s 50 different types of antibiotics that you can get for that. And then for dentists, there’s a bunch of different procedures, everything starting from root canal to implants.

 

It’s about trying to find the practitioner that, number one, matches your energy. Number two is seems to be competent. And in their initial intake, you should be able to tell right then if they know how to take care of kids. An initial intake where they’re making a connection to you and they’re making connection to the kid and they’re asking the right questions.

 

This kind of questions you just said. Well, does your kid feel comfortable in a car seat? Do you ever notice that Johnny turn his head to both sides? When he gets up at night, does he get up the same time every night? Have you noticed any other glitches in him? Anything else that seems… Especially with the other kids. Does he seem different than your other kids?

 

There should be questions that should cue you in that they know what they’re talking about at a certain point.

 

And as I always say, I always want people to be really careful. If one practitioner doesn’t help you, it doesn’t mean that that profession has failed and that practitioner’s particular modality doesn’t work as well.

 

I have people refer to me a lot because we specialize in pediatrics. Friends of mine who have chiropractors who do some pediatrics, not a lot. If they have a kid that is challenging, very often, they will refer them to me.

 

And what I will also do is I refer to people. If I’m working with a kid and I feel like, “It’s just not making the changes,” that’s what I’ll start to look at for ancillary input of maybe a speech therapist, maybe an OT, maybe a PT, maybe a lactation consultant if it’s a nursing issue.

 

You have to have a parameter. When patients come in with me and they have a kid, let’s say, with symptoms, I’ll say,

“Look, let’s take six weeks and we’re going to take this first six weeks and we’re going to try and change that pattern.

Within the first three to six weeks, we should know what I’m doing is going to help or if we need assistance.”

 

Matter of fact, when I get off this podcast, I have a call talking with a speech therapist with a child that we’re working with. We have a patient that we’re working with together and I’ve been working with the kid for about two months now and we’re going to connect and see how we can help facilitate the changes that we want in this kid.

 

You also want someone to be open to that but someone who’s not threatened by your questions. No practitioner wants to get 50 different questions because parents …. But they should be open to the questions that are pertinent  and to question you like, “I don’t think Johnny’s doing so well.” And if that becomes offensive to them, I would leave the office.

 

Shelly:

Mm-hmm, 100%.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

It’s like, okay, so what…

 

Because if someone says to me, “It’s been three weeks, doctor, I don’t see any changes.” I’ll say, “Okay, well, let’s reevaluate.” I may stop my actual normal visit protocol at that rate and change it and maybe reevaluate and see if what I see or the goals that I’m looking for have changed. If they have, then I’ll say the parent, “Look, what I’m trying to do is X,

Y, and Z and this seems to be changing, let’s give it a little more time.”

 

Or I might go, “Wow. You’re right. I haven’t really seen any changes. What else should we be doing? What’s happening at home? Is there something else that we should be looking at? Is he getting the tummy time that we talked about or is she eating well or not?”

 

There’s all these other parameters that you need to be able to look at. I think that’s it.

 

The biggest thing is being able to connect with him, making sure they ask the right questions, and then being open to a conversation not just like, “This is the way it is,” kind of thing, and be willing to ask them, “Doc or whoever, I don’t know if this is working. Do you know anybody else, or should there anything else that we may be doing or should be doing at this time to help facilitate the process?”

 

Shelly:

Yep. And I do have a family that I work with who the father is a chiropractor and he will adjust babies. He adjusts his own babies but he makes it clear that it’s not his thing-

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Right, exactly.

 

Shelly:

… and refers out as soon… Sometimes, he’ll see a baby because all the other bodyworkers are booked far out or something-

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Right, exactly.

 

Shelly:

… that opening with the provider that’s more familiar with babies, he makes sure to send them over there.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

I do a lot of work with babies. I do a lot of work with pregnant moms.

 

I just got a patient that came in last week. Very nice lady. She’s been going to a chiropractor for years. She really likes the chiropractor she’s seeing but now that she’s pregnant, she’s having several issues and he’s not able to deal with them. She goes, “Yeah. Right now, I’m pregnant, and I know that that’s part of your expertise, so I want you to take care of me during my pregnancy.” There’s a very good chance that she’ll go back to another chiropractor after the pregnancy or stay… But it’s a very clean break.

That happens all the time. It’s like, “Okay, great. I’m going to help you through this particular specialized period in your life because that’s my expertise. And then if you choose to go back under your regular chiropractic care, that’s great. Stay here, that’s great.”

 

We can’t take care of all the people and save the entire world all the time.

 

And so over 40 years in practice, there were times that there was one period of my practice where I really thought I wanted to be sports chiropractor.

 

I did a lot of work with trainers. I worked with health clubs. I myself used to do triathlons and was part of running clubs.

And after certain point, I went, “This is not really what I want to do.”

 

So if someone calls up and people call, “I have a sports injury,” I can deal with it, because I do have that in my past, but I’ll also tell them, “I’m not a sports chiropractor.”

 

I said, “I will help you with your adjustments, your protocols but I’m not going to set up an exercise program with you anymore. If you want all that kind of stuff, then I’m going to have to find somebody to work with you that way, but I’ll be happy to adjust you. And I know what to look for and I know what you do to take care of that. But again, it’s no longer my expertise and since I don’t do it, everything changes very fast. There’s probably things out there that I’m not aware of anymore that deals with that because I don’t want to keep up with it. It’s just not my thing.”

 

Shelly:

Right. I always say the best provider is the one who knows what they don’t know.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Yeah.

 

Shelly:

Yeah.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Yeah. It’s funny you said that because my daughter is a chiropractor and she said to me, we’re at a seminar, I don’t know, a couple of months ago, and she goes, “Dad, you keep saying I don’t know.” She said, “You never used to say I don’t know.” I was like, “Yeah, I know, because I always thought I knew everything. Now I know I don’t know everything.” She looked at me like, “Yeah, I don’t. There’s a lot of things we don’t know.”

 

So you’re right. I like that. Best provider is one that says they don’t know everything. I’ll put that on the wall somewhere.

 

Shelly:

Is there a minimum age that a baby has to be before they can start bodywork?

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

The second they come out of the uterus.

Shelly:

Okay, so basically-

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

I literally have gone to home births and actually hospitals right after birth to check babies. Yeah. So there’s no… When parents ask me that all the time and my answer to them is, “As soon as you feel up to bringing your child in, I’m ready to check your child.”

 

I’ve had people stop back on the way from the hospital. Like I said, I’ve gone to home births.

 

Ideally, actually, because of that… When we talked about that cranium, ideally, we’d really like to check the baby for the first time within the first 7 to 10 days because that’s the time when that cranium, after it comes out of transition, should normalize. So if it hasn’t in those 7 to 10 days, we can usually pick… Not usually, we can pick that up. That’s actually the premier time, those first 7 to 10 days to be checked at any time. We do…

 

So anytime is a good time. Again, there are a lot of factors depending on time management, how many other kids, how traumatic the birth was for the mom, how is she?

 

Shelly:

Right. How’s she feeling?

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

If it’s C-section… I mean I’ve had cases where people who have been either patients of mine are aware of the traumas of C-section have actually had the husband bring the baby in after the second week because the wife wasn’t able to yet, she didn’t feel up for it, and the dad would bring the baby in so I could check the baby, and then when the mom got better or felt up for it, she would come in with the baby. But yeah, so I’ve had that happen numerous times over the years.

 

Shelly:

And what about the after a baby goes through a release for a tongue-ties? Do you have a certain time that you like to see them?

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Usually, 48 hours. I don’t usually see them the next day because I don’t want to start sticking my finger in their mouth and checking it especially if it’s been somewhat traumatic, but usually within 48 hours, 72 at the most, I’d like to see it because we want to make sure that, number one, I double check to make sure that it’s healing well.

 

And I also want to make sure that I’ve had a couple of instances where they cut a little too deep and we had to tell the mom that this is going to take a little longer. I have to feel the …. The child’s going to have a little more difficult time. And so it helps me prepare them for what it’s going to look like over the next couple of weeks.

 

Because a lot of parents just think, “Oh, I’m going to the cut and they’re going to come back to nurse, and everything’s going to be perfect.” Not always the case. Sometimes yes, but not always the case.

So, yeah, 48 hours, 72 hours, just enough so the baby’s calming down because again, in their world, 48 hours is a long time. So they’ll have that memory so blatantly in their mind. So as soon as I go to check them out, then they’re going to basically hold back and be scared right away.

 

Shelly:

Tell us about your book.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

My book, our book. Here it is. I happen to bring it here. Here it is.

 

So I’ve written It’s All in the Head. Of course, it’s backwards. But anyhow.

 

My wife and I wrote it. I’ve written a number of books, technical books. I’ve been teaching for 39 of the 40 years I’ve been practicing. So I’ve written a lot of technical manuals.

 

This is the first book that we wrote for laypeople as well. So there’s a lot of information for healthcare practitioners obviously, but the book gives you a baseline of the anatomy and physiology of your child’s development. Talks about the milestones. It talks about the primal reflexes. Basically, talks about everything we talked about here.

 

Talks about tongue-tie, plagiocephaly, signs to look for when there’s an issue, and places that you can go to get help. That’s what it is. Everything we did in this podcast in a nutshell.

 

A lot of people have been buying it. A lot of chiropractors buy it. They give it to their patients.

 

Instead of trying to explain what we do, the book explains why we do what we do.

 

It talks about what I just talked about earlier, the dural meningeal system. It talks about cerebrospinal fluid which is basically the lifeblood of the central nervous system.

 

It gives you some basic anatomy, physiology, what to look for, what signs are up if things are wrong, and where to go for help.

 

Shelly:

And I like that it’s written for the layperson, for-

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

It’s written for the layperson.

 

Shelly:

… parents.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Yes.

Shelly:

Well, there’s not too many books about that out in general but especially-

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Well, that’s it.

 

Shelly:

… not for parents.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

This was our COVID contribution because part of the COVID thing, we used to travel a lot, usually about twice a month, to teach literally all over the world but shut down. We couldn’t travel. So we were home alone and we felt that drinking wasn’t the answer. So we tried writing a book together which actually is our first book that we wrote together because my wife’s a doctor, she’s a chiropractor as well.

 

So it’s targeted for two venues. It’s targeted for healthcare practitioners to be able to give to their patients for them to understand why they do what we do and what we’re doing. And then it’s also targeted to the layperson to get a sense of what’s important, why it’s important, and how do you get help.

 

Shelly:

And where can people find you if they want to connect with you or buy your book?

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Okay. So there’s a lot of places.

 

Number one, to buy the book, if you go to itsallintheheadbook.com, you get right to the book.

 

If you want to find me and you’re a lay person and you’re looking for care, then you’d want to go to my office website which is wellesleychiro.com. That’s my office website.

 

If you’re a professional and want to find out more about our seminars and our books and our courses because we do online and hands on courses, there’s two places. One of them is drmartinrosen.com, and the other is peakpotentialprogram.com and that they’ll give you all our courses and all our information and that’s for the professionals.

 

And to contact us by email, the best email probably is drmartinrosen@gmail.com. So any one of those venues.

 

Shelly:

Are you on social media at all?

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Yeah. We’re all over Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. We have a bunch of professional Facebook pages as well as lay professional pages.

I am on Instagram.

 

I have a TikTok account but I don’t dance really that well, so I won’t be able to teach them.

 

Shelly:

I’m definitely going to find you on TikTok.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Yeah. No, I don’t… You’ll probably find one of my daughters on TikTok. They’re much better dancers than I am.

 

Shelly:

Well, this was great. I think it’s so important to get this information out, and I will put all those links in the show notes.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

That’s great. I appreciate that.

 

It was great. I really enjoyed this. It was awesome. And you really seem to know your stuff. It’s great to talk to people who are in the same ballgame as we are and doing it for the same reasons to really help people get through these times because you’re right, these babies the last two years, if we don’t help them now, we’re going to have a plethora of kids with neurodevelopmental issues in the next generation and …

 

I probably won’t be around to see it, but you will, and we don’t want that.

 

Shelly:

Right. And it takes a collaborative approach.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Absolutely.

 

Shelly:

Thank you so much, Dr. Martin.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

No, thank you, Shelly.

 

Shelly:

Thank you for joining us this week on The Baby Pro Podcast.

 

Make sure to visit our website, shellytaftibclc.com, where you can check out our online parenting community, The Baby Bistro.

 

You can also follow us on social media @shellytaftibclc on Instagram.

 

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Thanks for listening and see you in two weeks.