Cranio-Sacral Therapy

'Round about the time Jacob started school, I found out about Cranio-Sacral Therapy. As I remember from my prenatal classes, babies' heads get slowly molded during labor thanks to these movable plates in their skull so that they can come out of their moms, and then the head slowly returns to it's proper position over the first week or so. The theory behind Cranio-Sacral therapy is that moms that have epidurals don't take labor/pushing at the proper pace, and the kid's head gets rammed repeated into her pelvic floor, locking up these plates. Since the heads don't mold (since they're locked up), some of those moms end up with C-sections, and the plates stayed locked up, putting pressure on certain parts of their brain (specifically the parts that cause symptoms of Autism) as they grow. Cranio-Sacral Therapists work to unlock those plates in the skull, removing the pressure and supposedly alleviating the signs of Autism.

Well, I had an epidural, and I had a C-section, and this all just made too much sense to me, and I figured it was worth a shot. So I started searching for a Cranio-Sacral Therapist. And actually located one in the next town, much to my amazement! I gave her a call and we chatted about Jacob and set up an appointment.

I was curious how this was going to even happen. I was bringing a child that hated doctor's offices and didn't tolerate strangers touching him (ESPECIALLY touching his head!), to a clinical setting so that a woman he didn't know could manipulate his skull. Good luck!

The day came, and he followed me into the office fairly cooperatively. He wanted no part of lying on the table (even sitting on the table was approaching his level of distress). I lay on the table next to him, and held him the best I could while she tried to work on him. It was a no-go. He screamed every time she put a hand on his head (she said that this was a symptom that there was something really wrong with his head -- I was less convinced, I felt it was the inevitable result of him feeling trapped and tortured). She ended up working on me instead.

We tried once more. This time, I had to carry him in and only made it as far as the waiting room, he refused to go any further. So he sat on my lap while she worked on me, and negative-stressed himself to sleep. She worked on him a bit while he slept.

I would have probably tried a few more sessions just to see if we made any progress, but I broke my ankle and was unable to carry him in the building, and he was unwilling to walk in on his own. Thus ended our attempt at Cranio-Sacral Therapy. I still think it's possible that he might benefit from it, but I'm not convinced enough to give something that he so obviously could not tolerate another shot. By the time my ankle was back to normal and it would have been a possibility, we were already starting to see some positive changes using RDI, so we decided to just go with that.