Parents despair when their babies won't stop crying.
The gentle manipulations of cranial osteopathy might provide an answer

Tiny Tolly, six weeks old, lay on his back on the examination table. Birthe, sitting behind his head, placed her hands under him, her fingers pointing towards his toes. Any movement she made was quite imperceptible. Tolly promptly went to sleep and lay blissfully unaware that his sacrum, or flat bony plate at the bottom of the spine, was being gently manipulated through his nappy.

Birthe Pickwoad practises cranial osteopathy at the Brackenbury Clinic in Shepherd’s Bush, London. She works by checking the movements of the central nervous system to locate any areas that aren’t moving freely. ‘You work on the suture you feel is restricted,’ she says. ‘The basic principles of osteopathy are the same whatever age the patient is – you are looking to find freedom of movement.’

Cranial osteopathy is a bit of a misnomer

The treatment is for the whole body,
not just the head. Practitioners deal with problems brought on by the process of birth but if a mother experienced a minor accident or emotional problem during pregnancy, these can also affect the newborn baby. The adjustments required are gentle and precise manipulations to correct alignments.

Why choose this form of treatment for a small baby?

When a baby is born, he experiences enormous pressures as he enters the birth canal, rotating from back to front, and finally emerging with the back of his head first. The sutures, or joins, in his skull are still flexible, and can slide over each other to accommodate the compression. These changes can persist after birth – not everything springs back immediately – sometimes leaving the baby uncomfortable. Nerves within the skull can be irritated, and the baby can become fractious as a result. The cranial osteopath aims to decompress
the sutures, making the baby more comfortable and therefore more settled.

Commonly in newborns, the spheno-basilar symphisis, a bony joint behind the sinuses deep inside the skull,
is compressed. Obviously, the osteopath cannot manipulate this joint directly,
but aims through her knowledge of anatomy, to release the pressure from the outside. Babies who are born using the ventouse, (a kind of sink plunger applied to the top of the baby's head to assist the birth) often suffer from this compression as their heads recoil after birth.
Spiralling down the birth canal can also compress the occiput, the bone at the base of the skull.

Relief for colic

Very close to the occiput is a bony hole where the vagus nerve emerges travelling through the neck and chest to provide a nerve supply to part of the digestive system. Some cranial osteopaths believe that colic, (a real plague for some parents where the baby cries bitterly for its first three months)
is related to compression of the vagus nerve. This is probably coupled with an immature digestive system. Birthe says that she and her colleagues have had ‘massive success’ treating colic.
So it’s worth considering if your baby won’t settle in the evenings.

What was Tolly’s problem?

The first month after Tolly’s birth wasn’t easy. He didn’t feed well and threw up so much that his weight gain was poor.
I was hoping that cranial osteopathy, which had been highly recommended to me by numerous, now unharrassed, mothers, might help his digestion.
One friend found the procedure so successful for calming and soothing her babies that she practically stopped by at the cranial osteopath on the way home from hospital.

Tolly was always a diurnal baby, in that
I took him to bed when I went, and he slept well between feeds. I was applying a routine to bedtime – bath at six, followed by feed and bed by seven – but it wasn’t working. The earlier part of the evening was always trying. He’d cry and fuss and jump on and off the nipple.
My other children, Maud, 12, and Archie, nine, quickly learned to get captions up on the television screen.

Unexpected result

The evening after Birthe had done her infinitely gentle manipulations, I went through the routine and put Tolly in his crib. I went downstairs, having turned
on the baby monitor, expecting to go back up shortly. Minutes stretched to half an hour. I crept upstairs. Tolly was fast asleep in his crib. I went down, and for the first time in weeks, made supper uninterrupted. I had to wake him for a feed at 11pm. It has been the same ever since. The children still watch television with the captions on. It is strangely addictive.

Tolly’s treatment

Tolly’s chest was slightly constricted, possibly because he had the cord around his neck at birth. Birthe worked on this and Tolly has had no chest problems so far. My other son Archie, nine, who also had the cord around his neck and was born in a fast and uncontrolled way,
had endless chest problems in the first months of life. How I wish I had known about cranial osteopathy then.
Nine years ago, it was just starting out. Now queues of anxious parents form wherever a registered practitioner sets up. The treatment is soothing and peaceful. I found myself talking about all kinds of childcare issues, and Birthe was full of useful advice and reassurance.

It is very important to choose a properly qualified practitioner

It is now illegal to practice as an osteopath without training and registration. Our first appointment lasted an hour and 20 minutes and cost £35; the second visit took 40 minutes at a cost of £25. This was enough to settle Tolly but other babies might need more treatments.

Birthe H. Pickwoad,
Registered Osteopath,
30 Brackenbury Road, London W6 0BA
Tel 0208 741 9264

For more information contact:

• The British Osteopathic Association
• The Sutherland Society –– the largest UK organisation for cranial osteopaths also has a contact list.