Just as adults can experience a wide range of benefits from the skilled hands of a registered osteopath, babies can too. Osteopaths are statutorily regulated primary healthcare professionals, who in private healthcare and / or primary, secondary and tertiary care in NHS settings.
Kennington Osteopaths & Physiotherapy practitioners are specialists in paediatric osteopathy and baby osteopathy. Osteopaths sometimes work with local health visitors and midwives and are trained to screen for medical conditions and will tell you if you, your baby or child needs to see another health professional such as your doctor, paediatrician or health visitor.
Baby osteopathy is formally called paediatric osteopathy, and is the gentle application of techniques to adjust your baby’s body in order to encourage it to function optimally which includes allowing your baby to relax enough to sleep deeply, digest fully and move comfortably. This in turn allows them to engage with you and the world in the best mood possible.
Babies’ skeletons are softer than an adult’s, and osteopaths will therefore use gentler techniques such as cranial osteopathy when treating babies. Manipulation is often applied to the baby’s head and neck as these are the presenting and accommodating parts during most births but they are by no means the only areas that paediatric osteopaths treat. As with adults, we treat babies as whole people, both as part of a mother-baby ‘dyad’, and as a person in their own right. We focus our treatment at the areas that our case history or careful palpation and examination direct us toward.
Baby osteopathy can be a very relaxing experience for the baby, often sending them to sleep or giving them lots of energy for a short time which may result in a sound night’s sleep.
Some people may be concerned about their baby being treated using baby osteopathy, but our paediatric osteopaths are highly qualified in the discipline, and can always be trusted to treat your baby gently and with care and respect. We have all undertaken an additional two years of training at post-graduate level and have many years of experience of treating babies and children.
Baby osteopathy can be used immediately after birth. Some osteopaths believe this to be the most beneficial time due to the malleability of the baby’s skull and body. We believe that you and your baby need some time to bond after delivery, so if you need to wait several weeks before you feel able to come in for treatment, that works well too.
If your baby is crying a lot and hard to settle in the two-week period after delivery, this may be an indication that something needs adjusting, requiring either gentle treatment, or an alteration of feeding or sleeping routines, or something else completely! Our meticulous case history and careful examination plus gentle palpation gives us extremely helpful clues, as babies can’t tell us what is bothering them themselves!
As with adults, paediatric osteopathy continues to be useful at any stage of a baby or child’s development, and may involve a course of treatment that involves some input from you at home between sessions.
If you are looking for the services of practitioners with an established track record or have questions about how we work, please contact Kennington Osteopaths & Physiotherapy. We are considered an authority in the paediatric field, with three of our staff members specialising in cranial osteopathy, offering you the peace of mind that only a true expert can bring.
Call 020 7735 6813 or email info@kenningtonosteopaths.co.uk
