Nikki Lee Health

Who hasn’t had felt an unexpected surge of emotion while being massaged? Perhaps we are lying on the table, drifting away contentedly, and then are suddenly in tears or very sad. The massage therapist has touched a place in us that remembers, and the associated feeling has been released. Our bodies and emotions are interwoven; the emotion of an event is stored in the body and released with the right environment and touch. When feelings, memories or sensations are thus released during craniosacral therapy (CST) session,  it is called a somato-emotional release and is a catharsis, a letting-go of strong emotions. When witnessing this phenomenon in infants, it can often be associated with two other behaviors, as a Catharsis Triad of Behaviors. I  base this on my observations of nearly 2 decades using CST in lactation consultant practice.

Some of us have had the experience of feeling better after we have told our story to an empathetic ear, a good friend, parent or religious advisor.  After the story is told and emotional support given, we feel better. Some kinds of psychological therapy consist of the client telling the stories of their childhood and past trauma, and then the stored energy of those stories can be released as part of healing.

Babies have feelings about their births, and how they were handled afterwards. Babies can be handled in a detached manner by hospital staff that are following all the rules of doing their job, instead of tenderly welcoming a new soul. . Babies’ heels are repeatedly pricked, they are circumcised, injected and suctioned, and exposed to bright lights and cold. Being human, babies have feelings about all these things. How often have you heard someone say that ‘they’re too young to remember’ when something painful is done to a baby?

Saying that babies don’t remember is a popular rationalization for doing painful things to newborns, infants, and children. For decades, surgery was performed on babies without anesthesia, because “babies didn’t feel pain.” Or, if they did, “they won’t remember.” Today, evidence (both of our own eyes, and of published research) tells us that nothing is further from the truth; babies do feel pain, and they feel it more acutely and exquisitely than do adults.

Sometimes babies can be so overwhelmed by the painful handling and disconnection from their mothers after medically induced or traumatic labors that breastfeeding either doesn’t occur or is painful, or if the breastfeeding is forced by someone shoving the baby’s head onto the breast.

Sometimes it is the mother who is overwhelmed with everything that goes along with a medically managed birth, as this mother wrote,  “I had a 2-day induction and a vaginal delivery. During those two days, I received cyotec, cervadil (twice) , a foley bulb inserted into my cervix, and pitocin along with an epidural. It wasn’t the birth I wanted, but that’s how it ended up.”

When one or both members of the dyad are overwhelmed or shut down after a hospital birth, breastfeeding doesn’t occur or is a painful struggle. In such cases, craniosacral therapy can help the mother and baby release the energy of their experience, and clear the way to breastfeeding.

When starting this type of work to recover breastfeeding, one must always prepare the mother for the possibility of her baby releasing a painful memory by crying before the hands-on work begins. Otherwise the mother is unprepared, ignorant of, and can be completely surprised by her baby’s emotional release.  An unprepared mother who sees her babies reliving a painful experience can be so overwhelmed themselves that they lose faith in CST, lose trust in me as a practitioner, and sometimes feel responsible for and therefore terrible about their baby’s distress. A baby letting go is a little hurricane of emotion. Fortunately, I made the mistake of not preparing the mother only once.

This was at the beginning of my career,  when a baby relived his circumcision while lying on his back as I gave him craniosacral therapy. He assumed the posture in which he was restrained on the Circumstraint Newborn Immobilizer (TM) , and roared and cried the unique cry that I have heard only during circumcisions. The mother and I were both surprised and both felt awful. She was so upset I could not console her; she left and I never heard from her again, despite a follow-up telephone call and letter.

Mothers learn best about CST by experiencing it. The world of energy medicine, light touch, and hands-on therapy is foreign to many. Yet every mother who has just given birth thoroughly enjoys some gentle work and releasing of tissues in her pelvis. Once she has experienced CST, she can then understand what she sees me doing with her baby; she has felt the light touch and knows that my hands are gentle when I hold her baby.

The most powerful results come when CST is done while mother and baby are lying skin-to-skin on my table. Joining several techniques together, CST with skin-to-skin and self-attachment, potentiates the power they each have alone. Last fall, another lactation consultant referred a mother of a baby with torticollis to me. The baby was about 6 weeks old, with a severe restriction of movement in her head and neck; this made breastfeeding very challenging.

The mother lay on the table to have me work on her while the baby slept in the car seat.  The environment in my office is comfortable, safe and warm, with a calming blend of essential oils being diffused, and  with flowers on the desk. During the treatment, she spoke of the birth and how breastfeeding hadn’t worked with her first baby and about her disappointment and sadness. With this 2^nd baby, she had had all of her gut instincts and desires ignored throughout her pregnancy and labor. She received technology and treatment that was intrusive and unwanted; she was trapped in the bed, and did what she was told. (Unfortunately, stories like hers are too common.)

When her baby awakened I asked permission to bring the baby to the mother and put them skin-to-skin. I put a blanket over them, as the mother continued to tell her story. I did some techniques to gently release the base of the baby’s skull, where the occiput and the first cervical vertebrae can be mashed together, the result of baby’s head being hyperextended while being pulled out of the birth canal. (Babies are meant to be pushed out, not pulled out.)

Suddenly, her baby started telling her version of the story, with huge sobs and tremors. We listened, as the baby wept and wailed, and “put her head down and cried” (the mother’s words) ……..only by then, her head was in mid-line, and her forehead was resting evenly on the mother’s sternum. The baby lay like that, in deep sleep for 10 minutes, then showed feeding cues and went to breast. The mother and I both noticed that the torticollis was gone, never to return. The energy of that rough birth had been stored in the baby’s sternocleidomastoid muscle, locking it into the spasm that we know as torticollis. Releasing the emotions had released the muscle!

Skin-to-skin care, remedial co-bathing, co-sleeping, self-attachment, hand expression, and CST are my stock in trade.  They are all proven techniques. After working in breastfeeding rehabilitation for nearly 2 decades, I have witnessed a collection of 3 infant behaviors that I call the ‘Catharsis Triad of Infant Behaviors.’

The Cathartic Triad looks like this: while lying skin to skin,  the baby will start seeking and moving towards the breast, and then have an emotional outburst. Mothers (and practitioners) need to listen to and encourage the baby to tell the story, and to accept the outburst. One can hear pathos, despair, fury, and grief in these cries. The baby will release emotion for a while, and then go to sleep. This is the catharsis cycle: seeking, emotional release, and rest; this cycle may repeat for up to 6 times (the record I have observed so far) before the baby either self-attaches and breastfeeds, or goes into a deep sleep. (In such cases, the mothers have been able to breastfeed once they get home.)

The mother has to learn the difference between the catharsis triad and an emotional meltdown. If the baby’s emotional expression accelerates in rhythm, if it increases in volume, if babies’ behaviors become increasingly disorganized and there is no break, this is an emotional meltdown. The session must stop and the baby be soothed. There is no point in continuing.

The baby behaviors in the Catharsis Triad differ in that they are always organized. Baby will seek the breast with a clear intention, then have an emotional outburst, and then sleep.

Always and above all else, is the practitioner’s respect for the mother’s desire to help her baby. Some mothers will get intensely interested in and encouraging of their baby during the Catharsis Triad. Others have to stop the process and cuddle their baby. As Coach Linda Smith says, “It is her baby.” She is encouraged to do what she wants.

Keeping one’s center and staying grounded and confident is a big challenge for the practitioner. Here the mother is paying you to help, and her baby is freaking out; how good can you be if this is what happens? One can start to feel scared, or worried, and want the baby to stop crying. Even though I have witnessed this countless times in my decades of clinical practice, I still sweat a little each time.

Sometimes it is beneficial to stop the session if the mother becomes upset or worried even if the baby wants to continue. If the mother is unable to sustain her platform of security for the baby, there is no point. However much, or little, is accomplished during a session like this is perfect for that dyad at that time. It all works out; the mother goes home with the tools to continue getting close to her baby. She doesn’t need any practitioner there to guide her. All she has to do is put the baby skin-to-skin on her chest and encourage the baby to do whatever it wants.

Occasionally, there is miraculous resolution and breastfeeding is recovered right before one’s eyes. When that happens, one’s heart sings. Everybody is happy. The beauty of contact and intimacy for healing is reaffirmed.