Chiropractic care, including the Webster Technique, plays a vital role before, during, and after pregnancy. It prepares and empowers the mom through childbirth and promotes optimal growth, development, and lifelong wellness for children starting from birth.
In what ways is it beneficial for women to begin chiropractic care before getting pregnant?
Dr. Gregg Rubinstein: It’s beneficial for everyone to be under chiropractic care. I always maintain that, and it doesn’t matter how old. We always have a joke. Chiropractic is appropriate from the womb to the tomb, right? We do work with pregnancy in our office. We work with infants and children, and we do have some older adults coming into our practice as well. And it doesn’t really matter how old you are, but if you have a spine, you need to take care of it.
But if we’re going to talk specifically about women and the benefits to being in chiropractic care before getting pregnant, look, the shape you’re in before you get pregnant is important because if you’re in great shape, you have a strong core and you’re exercising and you’re fit, well, you’re going to be in better shape throughout your pregnancy, right? And also, it applies to the spine, right? If you have, forgive my terminology, a crummy spine, you’ve never taken care of it. It’s scoliosis, it’s degenerating, and you’re having pain, and then you start pregnancy, things are going to get magnified because you’re going to gain weight during the pregnancy. You’re going to not be exercising as much; you become more sedentary. And all those things kind of set up that perfect storm for an increased amount of back pain, pressure on the nerves, discomfort, and dysregulation in the body.
There are a lot of changes that the body goes through during pregnancy. Your regulatory hormones change, your food demands change, your rest demands change. All those things are different. So, if you’re prepped and ready, the healthier you are going into the pregnancy, the healthier you’re going to be through the pregnancy, and the healthier you’re going to be after the pregnancy. So, it’s always beneficial to be under chiropractic care. And I always say, if you have a spine, you should be getting checked. Just like if you have a dentist, if you have a teeth, then you’re going to be seeing a dentist.
So that’s really how it all works. And like I said, it’s always beneficial to be under chiropractic care. There are almost no negatives to being under chiropractic care. And so, I tell people, like I said, it doesn’t matter what you got. You can have headaches, herpes, a hangnail, it doesn’t matter. You should be getting your spine checked because your spine is so important for your health. And we’ve all seen people with an unhealthy spine at 70 years old, they’re all hunched over walking slowly. They didn’t just wake up one day, look in the mirror and say, “Oh, gee, what happened to me?” All that happened slowly over time. So again, it’s always about keeping your spine and nerve system healthy. And then no matter what you’re doing, whether you’re an athlete or you’re delivering a baby or you’re a dancer or you’re a doctor, it doesn’t matter. A healthier spine means a healthier you. So, it’s always beneficial whether you’re planning to become pregnant or not, to be under care before you start any of these things.
How does chiropractic care during pregnancy, specifically the Webster Technique, support and empower a woman throughout her pregnancy?
Dr. Gregg Rubinstein: Well, one of the things is, typically, the type of mom who’s going to come into my office, more often than not is what I, for lack of a better term, call them the crunchy moms, right? The granola moms, and they’re looking to have a more natural birth. They want to do everything. Some of them want to do home births in the little baby pools, and a lot of them are working with midwives and doulas and things of that nature.
Care during pregnancy and the Webster Technique will empower a woman because now, she’s taking control, and she feels like she has some input into this. And I’ve said this a million times, that women have been birthing kids for tens of thousands of years before man ever really got involved, right? Nowadays, there’s tons of interventions, so many checkups, so many screenings, so many tests.
But when they know, and what we teach them is that you know how to do this. Your body has an inherent wisdom and you’ve been doing these things for tens of thousands of years. You don’t need a doctor to tell your body what to do. There are certain cases and there are outliers, as we’ve talked about. As moms are having babies much later in life, there tends to be more complications.
But my job with the Webster Technique is to balance the hips, balance the pelvis, relax the ligaments that are supporting the uterus, particularly the uterosacral ligament, the round ligaments. Those are the most important ones. And the other thing that we do is by balancing the spine and keeping it in proper alignment, we minimize pinching or pressure or pain that’s created when those bones get out of alignment, it allows more optimal birthing conditions for the mom when everything’s relaxed and not so tight.
And the important thing to understand is, again, it’s the neurology that controls all that. So just by telling a mom, say, “Gee, the baby’s not in good position at 25 weeks. The baby…” They use the term breach. And in my office, you can’t use the B word until you’re at 37 weeks. Really what you have there, is just a child who isn’t turned yet, right? Because sometimes labor will start, that kid will flip head down and come right out like a rocket ship. So, it’s different. But again, the support that we provide with the Webster Technique relaxes the body. Talking to the moms and really, literally talking them off the ledge saying, “There’s nothing wrong with you. They’re going to say these things, but there’s nothing wrong with you.” And so, when the brain is more connected, the body is going to be able to deliver that child because it’s going to execute the contractions, and the timing and everything is going to be perfect and rhythmic.
Sometimes when they start to intervene with a birth that’s going slow, they give them Pitocin, which is supposed to start the contractions. But the contractions that you get with Pitocin are these long, strong, harder contractions. They’re not as rhythmic as the natural contractions that the body does. And then that can lead to additional interventions, right? Because they have in-coordinated, they try to push or in-coordinated contractions, and then those things don’t go so smoothly.
When the nervous system is regulating and communicating properly, it’s a beautiful, harmonious process, and those kids get delivered safely and simply. So, it’s important to respect the natural order of things and the fact that they do know how to birth these kids, it’s innate. And that’s the beauty of it. When you just give them a little bit of help, Mother Nature does exactly what she’s supposed to do. And that’s how the Webster Technique is designed to support and empower the women throughout the entire pregnancy.
Can you explain how a healthy spine and nervous system play a foundational role in a baby’s growth and development?
Dr. Gregg Rubinstein: Well, I feel like I’ve covered this topic before, but absolutely. We always talk about the intelligence of the body, the innate intelligence, that inner wisdom and that wisdom really comes from the DNA, the genetics, right? Inside the genetic code, which is donated half by Mom in the egg and half by Dad from the sperm, they come together, and you have that single cell. And in that single cell is all the information and the blueprints to grow that perfect baby. So, 280, 290 days later, we get that baby to come out. And that intelligence controls and coordinates every stage of growth and development. If that nervous system is communicating those messages, then the orders get executed perfectly and you build a perfect baby. Then at every stage of growth and development, all the milestones are going when you have clear communication. Incorrect communication or poor messaging was going to always lead to poor results, right?
So, the important thing to understand is that there is an intelligence to the body. Mother Nature didn’t screw around. And if we have a little more trust in that, the body will do what it needs to do to deliver that baby. The baby’s growth and development is regulated by that nervous system. It knows what to do and that great baby will grow just fine. It doesn’t need any help. It just can’t have interference to the process.
Chiropractic offers the opportunity to clear pressure off the nervous system, restore normal function, normal tone, normal messaging in the body, and it’s always just a return to normal. When these kids start to turn on a dime and we see better growth and development and less colicky things, and the kids are calmer and more relaxed, the parents, again they call it a miracle. But all it is, is a return to normal physiology, and that’s what chiropractic is designed to do.
What adverse effects can the birthing process have on a baby’s head, neck and spine?
Dr. Gregg Rubinstein: Well, there’s different ways that these babies come out. Some of them come out naturally without too much help. Other kids need to be pulled out. Other kids get vacuumed out, other kids get forceps delivery. Some are born by C-section. Actually, almost 50%, here in New York, of the moms end up having C-sections. And there’s all kinds of adverse effects. The birth process itself, look, the babies are designed to be compressed, but then when the head crowns, a lot of times the doctor will turn the baby’s head to get the shoulders to a align vertically and then pull the baby out because time is money and they’re not going to waste that time. As soon as they see the head, they want to get that baby out as fast as they can.
So, it’s important to understand that when you rush the delivery or you do interventions, that can put pressure on that baby’s delicate spine, particularly the neck. And then they come out with these things like torticollis, which I really just think is code for a traumatic birth injury. And understanding that the nerve system controls all that. The cortex, right, which is underdeveloped in the child, but the brain stem and the basal ganglia, all that stuff at the center or what we call the midbrain, that’s everything that needs to run, regulate, and develop the body. And the interesting and scary thing is, you can cut away the cortex completely of the part that allows us to think, walk, talk, and all those other things and the body will still heal, run, regulate, and develop, all from the midbrain. And that midbrain is the closest to the atlas. Making sure that that is clear and the communication from the midbrain goes without interference, that’s going to allow that child to develop better.
So, from birth, from C-section, or sometimes even babies can be dropped or mishandled and no one’s told, all these things can put pressure on the delicate spinal nerves. And when there’s less free flowing information going from the brain to the body, it slows things down. So more communication, better, healthier spine and nerve system. More communication in the body executes the body’s orders perfectly. And that’s what we’re looking to see with every kid that we check.
What advice would you give to new parents on the benefits of bringing their baby to a chiropractor and starting chiropractic care at a young age?
Dr. Gregg Rubinstein: Well, what’s most important is, kids learn what you teach them. And if you teach a child to brush and floss at an early age, they’re going to continue that habit later. Kids learn from you their ideas about exercise. They learn from you about diet. They just want to be like Mom and Dad. So, at a young age, depending on what your child is going through, they might have digestive issues. They might have constipation, reflux, or colic. Perhaps they have asthma or allergies that make your little one irritable. Or maybe you’ve noticed your baby just isn’t eating or sleeping as well as you would like. And although it’s not the first option on many parents’ minds, chiropractic care for infants and children is an important facet of health and wellness for kids starting at the youngest age.
And chiropractors can help kids with their posture to make sure that they grow straight and straightening out the damage done by tumbles, rough housing, heavy backpacks, misaligned spines, all result from those types of stresses, strains, and traumas. It’s important to understand that chiropractors are part of healthcare to help handle some of the childhood health concerns. Minor adjustments to a kid’s back or neck can make enormous differences in eating, sleeping, digestions and respiratory problems. Even pesky autoimmune issues like ear infections and things like that can be aided with chiropractic care and make the body more efficient at fighting infections and fighting it to make sure that the body heals, runs and regulates and moves in a certain way. It’s so important because when you look at the baby’s nerve system, we know it’s the master controlling system. All the intelligence that created that baby, runs and regulates that body flows across that nerve system.
I’ve said it a million times and I will say it until the day I die, a clear nerve system means a healthier child, and that’s really what I recommend. So, getting the kids checked early so they understand and they learn these things, and they do it throughout the course of a lifetime. Because brushing your teeth throughout the course of a lifetime leads to a healthier mouth. Seeing a dentist throughout the course of a lifetime is healthy teeth. And with chiropractic, it’s the same. If you see a chiropractor from early on all the way through life, you’re going to have better alignment, better nerve system function, you’re going to be healthier. And that’s all we want for every mom, baby, and child on the planet.
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To speak with Dr. Gregg Rubinstein, visit www.ChiropractorMidtown.com or call (212) 977-7094 to schedule an appointment.
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