September 26, 2026
Babies and kids
This is the question I get most, usually phrased carefully by someone who has already decided the answer is going to be alarming. So here's the plain version.
An infant adjustment is not a smaller copy of an adult adjustment. There's no twisting, no rotating, no cracking sound, and nothing that looks like what you've seen on the internet. I use about the pressure you'd use to check whether a tomato is ripe, applied with one or two fingertips to one specific spot, and I hold it for a few seconds. Most babies sleep through it. A fair number of them are on their mother's chest the entire time.
What I'm looking for first is movement. I'll turn your baby's head gently to each side and feel how far it goes and where it stops. I'll do the same through the upper back and the hips. What I'm checking is whether one direction is restricted compared to the other, because that asymmetry is what tends to show up in the things that brought you in: the latch that works on one side and not the other, the head that always turns the same way, the baby who settles on your left arm and never your right.
If I find a restriction, I work on that one thing. If I don't, I say so.
Here's what I won't tell you. I won't tell you this cures colic, or reflux, or ear infections, because it doesn't, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. What I can say is narrower and more honest: when a mechanical restriction is making something harder, addressing the restriction helps with that specific thing. When the problem is something else, you need something else, and I'll point you to it. Most weeks I refer at least one family to a pediatrician or an IBCLC, sometimes both, sometimes instead of seeing them again.
You'll be in the room the entire time, because you always are, and I'll narrate what I'm doing while I do it. You can stop me at any point and ask what that was.
If you've got questions you'd rather ask before you book anything, call the front desk. I'd rather spend ten minutes on the phone than have you sitting in my office still wondering.
An infant adjustment is not a smaller copy of an adult adjustment. There's no twisting, no rotating, no cracking sound, and nothing that looks like what you've seen on the internet. I use about the pressure you'd use to check whether a tomato is ripe, applied with one or two fingertips to one specific spot, and I hold it for a few seconds. Most babies sleep through it. A fair number of them are on their mother's chest the entire time.
What I'm looking for first is movement. I'll turn your baby's head gently to each side and feel how far it goes and where it stops. I'll do the same through the upper back and the hips. What I'm checking is whether one direction is restricted compared to the other, because that asymmetry is what tends to show up in the things that brought you in: the latch that works on one side and not the other, the head that always turns the same way, the baby who settles on your left arm and never your right.
If I find a restriction, I work on that one thing. If I don't, I say so.
Here's what I won't tell you. I won't tell you this cures colic, or reflux, or ear infections, because it doesn't, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. What I can say is narrower and more honest: when a mechanical restriction is making something harder, addressing the restriction helps with that specific thing. When the problem is something else, you need something else, and I'll point you to it. Most weeks I refer at least one family to a pediatrician or an IBCLC, sometimes both, sometimes instead of seeing them again.
You'll be in the room the entire time, because you always are, and I'll narrate what I'm doing while I do it. You can stop me at any point and ask what that was.
If you've got questions you'd rather ask before you book anything, call the front desk. I'd rather spend ten minutes on the phone than have you sitting in my office still wondering.
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