You're taking your baby where?

This is the response I get most of the time when I mention I've started taking Sadie to a chiropractor. I started doing a ton of research on home/alternative remedies for ear infections. Some of the things I ran into, didn't sound too fun to me. Can you imagine holding half of a warm onion under a baby's ear for 20 minutes? Sounds like lots of tears, both from the onion and frustration, to me! Or trying to put homemade garlic oil drops in a baby's ears? But one thing I kept running into over and over again was chiropractic care. Sometimes all a baby needs is a little adjustment to get his/her nervous system all in order and to allow the ears to drain properly.

As it happens one of our clients is a chiropractors office, so I emailed my contact over there (the wife of the owner and main chiropractor) and asked her what they thought about working on babies and helping with ear infections. She emailed me right back and said yes, that they love working on babies and have had great results with avoiding ear tubes! Fantastic, right? Right.

So, Sadie and I went in for a consultation last Wednesday. (Oh, and Robert was totally on board with this, which surprised me for some reason. Maybe he is just getting used to me googling the shit out of everything!) Anyways, last Wednesday. We had a bit of a long wait in the waiting room, which is typical for any afternoon doctors appointment, but Sadie and I kept occupied, mostly with her trying to crawl behind the receptionists desk and me chasing her out, which she thought was great fun of course. Once we were taken back, I was just asked some pretty typical questions about why we were there and all that. We were placed in the "family room" which had toys, books and puzzles while we waited just a little bit longer for the chiropractor.

I was a little nervous about the chiropractor being a man. Sadie is kind of going through a stranger danger phase right now, especially around men. The only man she is ever really around is her dad, it's women all day at day and if Robert has any friends over it's usually after she's gone to bed. I had no reason to be nervous though. The chiropractor came in and sat down with us while Sadie played and talked to me and told me his thoughts and experiences with ear infections and tubes. He has two kids, when the oldest started showing sign of ear infections he kept her adjusted and all was great, she never had infections never had to go on antibiotics etc. With his youngest, adjustments just weren't enough, he would still have fluid in his ears and infections. Instead of putting him on an antibiotic they went straight to tubes. So, I was happy to hear all that and that he wasn't all "oh, I can guarantee you wont need tubes, I don't believe in them".

After all of that talking I decided to go on and give it all a shot. If t works great, maybe we can avoid tubes and surgery, if not no big deal, we'll proceed with tubes if that's what Sadie's main doctor recommends at our next appointment.

By this time Sadie had warmed up a little so she let the chiropractor pick her up without flipping out. And then I swear all he did was hold her under her arms and jiggle her a little bit! But, I know he did more than that, that's just all it looked like to me! She was fine, no crying or anything like that. Next he had me go sit in the table and hold Sadie on my lap while he showed us this crazy tool:

It makes a popping noise when the top flat part is pushed down, but it doesn't really feel like anything. He put it on my hand a popped it a few times, in his hand and popped it, then finally in Sadie's hand. She was baffled! So he did it a few more times, she finally go to where she was holding her palm out for it! Once she was used to it, the chiropractor used it on each side of her neck under her ears. Finally he had me lay down on the table with Sadie on my chest and he rubbed her back some, I'm sure it was more than rubbing it, but that's all it seemed like to me!

We were sent home with instructions to come back two more times in the next week.

Sigh, here is where I run into my biggest issue with this path. My work isn't that flexible with me taking time off. Working though lunch to make up for an hour isn't generally allowed, and our time off is done in half day increments. Chiropractic care is a preventive medicine, and at the beginning it seems to require a lot of close visits in order to get everything aligned. Thankfully my boss has been pretty understanding so far with this and is allowing me to work though lunch as long as I am in the office by 9am or don't leave until 4pm. But if this is something I will have to do every week, that generosity might go away. So, for now, I'm planning on taking Sadie once a week for the next few weeks until her 15 month check up. At her 15 month check up we'll see how her ears are doing and evaluate from there.

So far I have not noticed any difference, other than the fact Sadie decided to walk. Haha, but I am not going to give credit for that to the chiropractor, at least not yet! We probably wont really know if it's been working until the 15 month check up since the chiropractor does not check her ears or anything like that. So, I'll keep yall posted on what happens over the next few weeks!