Infant Parent Healing     "We are each the union of the Mother and the Father."

        Janel Martin-Miranda, MA, LPC (IL)                     Prenatal and Birth Focused Counselor              CranioSacral Therapist

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Artwork www.waterspider.net

Assisting and supporting parents to create

healthy attachment and bonding

with their baby -- for a lifetime  

 

 

Benefits of Infant-Parent Healing

with Prenatal and Birth Focused Therapy

 

For Pregnant Mothers and Partners

·         Resolving Fertility issues

·         Resolution of anxiety and previous traumatic birth experiences, including preparing for VBAC (Vaginal Birth after Cesarean)

·         Assisting baby to turn from breech position

·         Resolving structural pelvic issues - prior to labor to eliminate pain

·         Mom and baby birth advocacy and support (home or hospital birth)

 

For Newborns and Infants

·         Relief from nursing problems

·         Resolution of colic 

·         Secure attachment of baby to parents and bonding of parents with baby

·         Support for and resolution of post-partum depression

·         Stimulation of physical and neurological systems

 

For Toddlers, Children, Teens, and Adults

·         Relief from chronic asthma, ear, throat, and respiratory infections

·         Resolution of crawling issues, ADD/ADHD, asthma, autism, sleep, behavior issues

·         Resolution of physical and emotional traumatic events

·         Resolution of relationship, emotional, grief, and anger issues

·         Facilitating attachment during adoption

·         Resolution of abortion trauma

 

Symptoms of Prenatal or Birth Trauma

That Lead to Complications in

Infant-Parent Attachment and Bonding

 

 

Click on each of the bulleted items below to learn more about the symptoms of prenatal or birth trauma:

 

·         Baby has impaired latching, sucking, swallowing, choking or other nursing problems.

 

·         Baby receives a diagnosis of colic and/or is prescribed medicine without explanations or answers and/or has chronic ear infections (both can be caused by physical restrictions that occur during the birth process.)

 

·         Baby arches his or her back when picked up, or stiffens or looks away, or is defensive when touched, or won’t make eye contact.

 

·         Baby seems to be “checked out”, or “zoned out”, “far away”, or “not there” when awake.

 

·         Baby sleeps a lot, rarely cries, and is considered “such a good baby.”

 

·         Baby cannot be awakened, even after hours of sleeping, or feels limp.

 

·         Baby cannot be consoled and/or is inconsolable during certain times each day and/or clenches fists and/or tightens stomach when crying.

 

·         Baby seems emotional, irritable, fearful, angry, or frustrated. 

 

Symptoms of Prenatal or Birth Trauma

 

·         Baby has impaired latching, sucking, swallowing, choking or other nursing problems,

 

Such as a baby who nurses and pulls away or jerks head back, fusses, and attempts to re-latch. These are only a few of the nursing symptoms of physical and emotional trauma that can be easily resolved with Infant-Parent Therapy. Posterior presentation at birth and rough, excessive suctioning done immediately at birth are two of the many contributors to nursing problems. Both involve physical and emotional trauma and the timing and manner in which these interventions are done often disrupts the attachment sequence at birth. This is easily healed with Prenatal and Birth Therapy.

 

The International La Leche League recommends CranioSacral therapy for nursing problems. Traditional CranioSacral Therapy works to resolve physical restrictions in the bony and membranous structures of the body. Prenatal and Birth Therapy heals the emotional and psychological attachment issues that interfere with successful breastfeeding.

 

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·         Baby receives a diagnosis of colic and/or is prescribed medicine without explanations or answers and/or has chronic ear infections.

 

Irritable stomach and colon, repeatedly and consistently spitting up, and vomiting for unexplained reasons are symptoms of emotional and physical trauma. A mother knows intuitively when something is not right with her baby and she should not simply accept the diagnosis of colic and the use of medication without also using birth therapy as an augment to the drug therapy. Babies who resolve their emotional and physical traumas often make immediate and sustained improvement in the first session.

 

Colic and chronic ear infections can be caused by physical restrictions that occur during the birth process, particularly when the mother births in the supine or lying down position. Miriam Mills, MD, a pediatrician in Tulsa, OK has completed a five-year study of the use of cranial manipulation as an alternative to medication and surgery to treat colic and chronic ear infections. Her results are soon to be published.

 

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·         Baby arches his or her back when picked up, or stiffens or looks away, or is defensive when touched, or won’t make eye contact.

 

These are symptoms of possible attachment and bonding issues between mother and baby. An attachment and bonding issue does not mean that a mother doesn’t love her baby. It is not because a mother doesn’t wish to bond with her child. Attachment disorder is a symptom of a missing piece in the attachment process that is often interrupted at birth. Additionally, so many factors prenatally and at birth can impact the attachment and bonding process between mother and infant. Prenatal and Birth Therapy provides opportunity to easily resolve and heal the parent-child relationship in the early days and weeks rather than after years of cycles of emotional damage and pain and disappointment.

 

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·         Baby seems to be “checked out” or “zoned out” or “far away” or “not there” when awake;

 

·         Baby sleeps a lot, rarely cries, and is considered “such a good baby”;

 

·         Baby cannot be awakened, even after hours of sleeping, or feels limp.

 

The above three are symptoms of shock from trauma. The baby is dissociated either because of physical or emotional trauma.

 

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·         Baby cannot be consoled and/or is inconsolable during certain times each day and/or clenches fists and/or tightens stomach when crying.

 

A baby with clenched fists, tightly closed eyes, and inconsolable crying, stiffening, thrashing of body, and resisting comfort or the touch of the mother or father is communicating the memory — his or her story — of early experiences in the womb and at birth. Crying spells at the same time of day is a symptom of a trauma response. Nocturnal crying is often related to cranium trauma such as in birth by c-section or other situations where the baby labors without progression, where the baby births too quickly, and/or when the baby’s head and neck are mishandled or over extended at birth as in vacuum extraction and forceps delivery. Lack of progression is often a place where a prenate has become stuck in the mother’s pelvis and experienced fear and anxiety while the head has continued to push against the un-opening cervix and bony structures of the mother. This causes physical symptoms that continue through life as the body and mind compensates. For example, most adults come to massage and chiropractic sessions for relief of neck, shoulder, and back pain that in the study of prenatal and birth trauma are now known to be rooted in the physical and emotional experience of birth.  Click here for more on infant massage.

 

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·         Baby seems emotional, irritable, fearful, angry, or frustrated.

 

Since babies are fully conscious and intelligent beings, they are capable of experiencing and expressing the entire range of human emotion. If a baby seems angry, sad, furious, scared, or frustrated to you, trust your own feelings and seek help to understand and heal your baby.

 

During the birth process a prenate often must become quite angry, terrified, or determined enough to build the potency necessary to move through obstacles at birthing from the womb. This emotion continues to be experienced after birth at particular times, such as when life experiences trigger the memory of the experience, when the baby’s body is in a certain position, or when touched on the head or other parts of the body. Building potency for action through anger or fear becomes an imprint for life. This can be seen in behavior of young toddlers, long after colic and crying symptoms have subsided.

 

The typical response of adults to trauma crying by an infant is to bounce the baby and roughly pat the baby’s back to console them; to stick a breast, pacifier, or bottle in the baby’s mouth; and to tell them, “You’re okay, it’s okay.” These responses can exacerbate the emotions of the baby, because the baby is not being heard nor is she being validated about her experience. As adults we know it doesn’t feel good to be told, “it’s okay, it’s okay” when we know it isn’t. Often, someone acknowledging the emotion and situation from a non-judgmental and empathic perspective is enough to help one to move on.  Otherwise, we feel unheard and eventually stop trying to share our story when others are not able to sit with us in the painful place we are feeling.  As an infant emotional support is often substituted with the breast, bottles, pacifiers, or the baby is left to “cry it out”. This teaches the infant to stuff her feelings and use things outside herself for comfort.  By adulthood comfort is found in addictions with food, alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, relationships, sex, porn, gambling, shopping, over working, etc.

 

To understand birth from the perspective of the baby, consider as an adult, how one might feel if stuck in a shaft or fallen building where one cannot see or move. Imagine the experience of being trapped hours or days while others must assist in your release or escape for your survival. Your body would be totally confined, and in many places with unimaginable restriction and pain, while your mind and emotions are wild with fear, anxiety, and terror; yet, you must remain calm and in control as best you can to prevent panic that could lead to your death, probably by suffocation.

 

During the process of extrication there might be moments of ease and even relief as any new movement through the tunnel might ease tension on the body part that was engaged. Or, perhaps this movement through some segments of extrication creates more pressure on parts of your body or maybe a lack of oxygen. At this point your heartbeat might drop or accelerate in response to your situation and the air supply, or lack of oxygen. In labor, when a mother needs oxygen, the baby will be experiencing exactly what the mother feels, such as some degree of safety or fear.

 

How would rescue personnel assist and interact with this person? Mechanical assistance would be necessary. Would they administer drugs to push the individual through an impassable place? Would the drugs be helpful to be sedated but prevent your ability to assist in your own efforts? Would those assisting you ignore your fears, pain, and your emotional needs because you “won’t remember the pain or fear?”  Wouldn’t there be a person or team of persons speaking softly, providing reassuring verbal support by acknowledging the fear, pain, etc. and detailing the efforts to help you, and touching you if and where possible? Maybe even reassuring you of the support they have together as a team in assisting you in their efforts to get you out? This is exactly what a baby needs during the birth experience. S/he needs for the birth support team to focus on supporting the mother and for the mother and the others to be communicating with each other and the baby.

 

Later, after being extricated, your body and emotions would spontaneously let loose (an effect of being a self-preserving, homeostatic human being). You would vocalize (uncensored) your experience and feelings that you were unable to express while confined. Most effectively, this would be done with the loving physical and listening support of someone close.  Communicating his or her perspective of the experience and releasing the trauma is what a baby is doing in the early months of life. Babies are telling the story of their birth, the joys, fears, and pains, from their perspective. If she is unacknowledged, she will learn to physically and emotionally compensate.  Imagine that after your own extraction from entrapment you were not allowed to express your body’s spontaneous, uncontrollable reactions to trauma and shock. You were expected to not let your body shake (a reaction to shock), to not let your tears to flow, and to not let out your screams or even your words, to express the experience. Your unresolved feelings would be compensated within your body and would be expressed in physical pain and illness. You’d likely be defensive in any situation that triggered the memory of your confinement.

 

It is difficult for a new parent to watch and hear their newborn who is expressing their anger and grief from prenatal and birth trauma much.  It is likely that when a baby shows the symptoms of trauma that this also contributes to post-partum depression for the mother.  So often the parents are feeling the depth of their own emotions of fear, anger, powerlessness, etc. and so a parent might feel the need to avoid their own feelings and will not be able to be present with their infant.  When mothers and fathers are unable to recognize their own and their baby’s feelings and are unable to empathize with the baby’s birth experience, the consequence is that the child feels unheard and unsupported. Parent and infant bonding is further impaired and a lack of trust deepens. Prenatal and Birth Therapy supports a parent to hear, to be with their angry, grieving infant. The result is a healing of the relationship and the facilitation of attachment and bonding. When parents are supported to support their infant’s experience healing occurs.

 

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A Baby's Birth - is a continuum of critical periods  of physiological development that begins even before conception and completes at the mother's breast, in the arms of the father, and will be lived  throughout life.              -          -- Janel Miranda

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Janel Miranda

 When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced; live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.

— Cherokee Saying

 

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Welcome, Little One! 

my grandson 

 
Andrew Mekhail

was born December 23, 2005

 

 My daughter, Erin, gave birth VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean) at 9:30 am in Phoenix, AZ. Andrew weighed 7#14 oz, was 19-1/2 inches long.

 

   

 They did the self-attachment sequence -- visit my Self-Attachment page to learn more  -- has lots of pictures.

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

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Janel Lou Martin Miranda, MA

Prenatal and Birth Therapist

CranioSacral Therapist

Mother and Baby Doula

Columbia, MO  

573-424-0997

 

This article may be reproduced for your organization provided

it is not altered in any way and the following is attached:

Used With Permission
© 2003-2004 2005 Janel Lou Miranda, MA. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.infantparenthealing.com •  Columbia, MO   573-424-0997   janel_miranda@yahoo.com

 

Content last updated: November 1, 2005; previously September 20, 2003

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