New Discoveries

I’m venturing deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of “natural” remedies.  It’s actually quite addicting, this feeling good stuff.  Eating real food from a garden?  That’s quite addicting.  Just try and you’ll have a tough time going back to regular tomatoes.  I don’t know if it counts as a “natural” remedy, but certainly drug-free, I have started seeing a chiropractor for the pain in my back that I’ve been feeling ever since Ingrid was born.  I have gotten massages after the birth of a few of my kids, but I’ve never seen a chiropractor.

I was a little nervous, to be honest.  So I asked for chiropractor recommendations from everyone I knew who saw a chiropractor.  The same name kept coming up over and over, so I went to go see him.

I cannot tell you how good I feel.  This feeling healthy and well thing is just great.  I’ve seen him twice now, and I have at least one more appointment.  We’ll see how long I have to see him.

Talking with some mom friends, I hear many of them bring in their kids regularly, to prevent sickness.

Now that sounded a bit hooky to me, but I decided to research into it more.  Basically I talked to more people about it.  At my first appointment with this guy, I asked him what he could do for kids.  Is it safe?  Is it helpful?  Is it expensive?  Do they have to come back all the time?

What can he do?  Lots of stuff.  He helps with ear infections, sleep issues, fevers, asthma, etc, etc, etc.
Is it helpful?  Yes.
Is it expensive?  Surprisingly, no.  Most insurance covers it. (We have awful self-employed insurance.  It goes towards our deductible but that’s about it.  So how much it cost was a huge concern for me.)
Do they have to come back all the time?  No.  Once you realize how good it feels to feel good, though, you’ll WANT to come back all the time.  He thinks a bare-bones care plan for kids is about 4 times a year to keep the immune system running really well.  He says kids with regular chiropractic care rarely get sick.

Since the cost of bringing all my kids in for an adjustment was less money than taking just one of them to the doctor when they’re sick, I thought I’d give it a try.  So for my second adjustment, I made an appointment for 2 of my kids to “experiment” with this idea.  I know that’s awful, right?  I picked David and Solveig.  David because he’s so extremely active, and Solveig because she’s not been sleeping at night and we can’t figure out why.  It’s been over 6 months, but perhaps longer where she wakes up every few hours like a newborn.  I normally get up with Ingrid and Knut gets up with Solveig, so it’s really been wearing on him.  We’ve tried giving her Tylenol, Motrin, gas drops, teething necklaces…we can’t figure out what is hurting her.  We don’t know where to start looking or testing.

The night before the 2 kids and I are to get adjusted, Silje spikes a high fever along with a bad cough.  By morning all the kids have the awful cough.  So I call the office, and they say they are willing to squeeze 2 more kids into our appointment.  I added Silje because I wanted to see how an adjustment would effect her fever and cough, and Elias because…well Elias gets left out of everything, and I honestly didn’t want him to feel left out watching all his siblings besides Ingrid get an adjustment.

I was really worried that Solveig wouldn’t let him touch her.  We started oldest to youngest.  Silje bravely went first as all her siblings watched.  When they saw she didn’t hurt, David hopped up on the table next.  Elias was next and then Solveig.  Those last 2 giggled pretty much the whole time on the table because he’s a funny guy, and they thought the cracking noise in their body was funny and tickled, and he was handing out stickers like crazy and talked to them like real people.

So here’s my report of his findings:

Silje had mostly upper back things to be done.  Neck issues due to reading all the time, but minor.  He said her back adjustment will flood her system with white blood cells.  My report: her fever was gone by evening, cough and sore throat gone by the next morning.

David had very few back and neck adjustments.  His pelvic joint was all locked up, though, so he had a ton of cracking in his hips.  The doctor said he’ll be able to be much faster now.  Thanks, doc, but we weren’t really lacking there.  😉  Do you have something to make him move less?

Elias, the tag along, had the MOST issues to deal with the doc said.  He said his back, neck, and hips were all locked up and he was likely constantly achy.  This tore at my heart because Elias is our constant whiner, and does things as slow as molasses.  All this time, he had been hurting.  Let me tell you, he’s been smiling and jumping ever since we’ve come home.  He has used a nice voice and not whined ONCE since yesterday.  His Eeyore face has given way to this face of joy and I cannot begin to say how happy that makes me.

Solveig was pretty good in her back and hips, but he said her neck was really messed up.  His best guess was that she started getting headaches when she was laying flat for any period of time, which would explain why she kept waking up moaning all night, every night but was her happy, normal self during the day.

I figured the proof was in the pudding, and we were very curious how she would sleep last night.

She slept.  The whole night.  Didn’t even roll over.  We slept too.  We’re just a crazy sleeping family now.

He said that if my kids were adults, a few of them would have needed multiple visits, but since kids adjust so easily and heal so fast, that was it.  We’re done with no follow ups unless I want to bring them in a few times a year as a preventative measure.  As I’m hearing, kids who get adjusted don’t really get sick that often.  Since everything he told me so far is true…then sign us up.

So that’s what we’ll do.  I’m sold.