Foundation for Paediatric Osteopathy

My daughter is nearly 18 months old and has had no serious health issues to date (touch wood!). She has a happy, easy-going nature and sleeps well. Obviously I am very grateful for this but she had a difficult birth so it's quite a surprise and I can't help worrying that something might be looming in the future and should I get her checked out?

With regard to the birth she engaged facing forwards rather than backwards (I forget the terms) and then got stuck because her chin was up rather than tucked down onto her chest. I had pushed her reasonably far down so they tried both forceps and ventouse to get her out (the ventouse left a huge round bruise on her forehead because of her position but this went down wthin a week of her birth). Since neither worked I had to have an emergency c-section. I was conscious that it was a hard c-section for the team because they really had to pull her back up and out and her apgar score was 3 at 1 min. Luckily they got this up to 9 at 5mins. I was told afterwards that the team had found my c-section traumatic!!

I met an osteopath at a party a while ago and I didn't give him the full story but he suggested that I get a cranial check and it has been nagging on my conscience ever since. Would I be wasting your time since she is not suffering any discernible health problems at the moment?

Many thanks.

Firstly sorry for the delay in replying.

Osteopaths working in the Foundation's clinics have specialist expertise relating to assessing and treating children. The birth story you describe sounds like is had much potential to create stresses and strain within the structure of your daughters body. Without assessing her, it would be diffiuclt to determine just how much it affected her.

As children and adults acquire stresses and strains, some of them create symptoms but others are compensated for, meaning that the body makes adjustments to cope with them. As we continue throughout life and acquire more strains related to injury or bad posture, it sometimes makes it harded to cope with the early strains so symptoms appear later.

In view of this it might be a good idea to get her checked. You can book an appointment for a checkup in the clinic. The osteopath will carry out a full assessment and if there are no effects from the delivery then the osteopath will let you know.

Nancy