Cranial Osteopath to help 14 week old sleep?

[louby78]

I've got a session booked with a very reputable lady next week. I am not going thinking it will solve my problems but if it does - great!! It's more to check everything ok and give my DS a bit of a check over.

Basically his sleep is a bit of a nightmare. In the day he is a terrible napper - be it in the sling (which used to be great), pushed in the pram or in the car. He wakes after about 15/20mins and is a nightmare to get back off despite being tired. He can go for long stretches sometimes but there is no pattern.

Then in the night he goes down great at 7 but then it depends. Sometimes he wakes at 10, sometimes 11 or 12 then only lasts till 2 and then from about 4 he wakes every hour.

He has had a permenant cold from birth which I read somewhere can be helped with a CO.

Anyone any experiences - helping sleep or having no effect??

Thanks.

no experience with babies myself but...

I have been seeing a cranial osteopath on and off for a year and "Oh my God" it is fantastic.

he told me I had been dropped on my head before I was a year old and when I brushed this off he said "no, seriously, you were". I then queried it with my parents who admitted I had rocked my bouncy chair off the kitchen table on to the floor whilst dancing to the Archers at 9 months old

He went onto to explain that this meant my skull was fused in such a way that was causing stress and I dont remember it all but basically it was why I thrived on stress and crammed so much into a day.

After each session I sleep like I have never slept before. I can't explain it but it is just "different". Feels less fitful and I wake refreshed rather than my usual "I am knackered" which wears off during the day.

I have talked to him about work on babies ( I have teenagers so didnt know about him when mine were little) and he says that he has done an awful lot of research on it and can explain why it works. He did start to explain it to me but was about to make my neck crack so I stopped listening!!

Happy to send you his name if you want more info or to google him (his research paper is on the web).

Go for it. It really wont make your son any worse. It is a gradual process though, it wont all be fixed over night.

And as for the cold... are sure he is not allergic to something in his bedding?

My Ds had it to help with his posture rather than sleeping; he had one arm permanently up by his ear and was reluctant to straighten it out but CO fixed that in one session. A few other things were helped as well with it - I think it's brilliant.

but you will get some people coming on soon who will tell you that it's all a load of "woo" and that the practitioners are robbing you blind because it doesn't really do anything - ignore them and go with your instincts. If you feel after one session that there really has been no improvement then don't go again - but as BBM says, it can take a few sessions to sort things out fully.

Good luck with it - hope it sorts your baby out for you! :)

I had shocking backpain during late pregnancy that physio couldn't help with, I tried an osteopath as a last resort (not really believing in the mumbo-jumbo) and experienced a miracle-cure.

I still don't quite believe how bad the pain was and how much it disappeared with a bit of gently prod-ing. My practitioner also did CO for babies so when DS was a very unsettled 6 week old (sleeping during the day, up every hour in the night) we took him into see her a couple of times.

She didn't appear to 'do' very much and it's difficult to say if it helped but he always had a much better nights sleep after a visit and before long got to sleeping longer at night. It only took two visits before he was signed off as perfectly healthy baby so I didn't feel we were ripped off.

If you can afford it, go for it - it'll probably help and won't do any harm.

(btw, if you're in London there's a CO society somewhere near Farringdon that sees babies free of charge - google for more info)

Yep - DS had it for a few months and it totally starting to work after only 2 sessions.

I'm a big advocate of CO however, I have a hard time convincing DH. he's sceptical of anything that isn't seen as the norm but i proved him wrong.

DS had a terrible problem sleeping on his back; he simply couldn't lie flat on his back. For a newborn, that's obviously a problem as current guidelines say to put them on their backs. It really stressed me out. It was a God send when she solved the problem and he could straighten out his abck properly so quickly.

Hope it helps for your little one.