Does Your Baby Have A Strong Neck Part 2

One of my most viewed videos is “Does Your Baby Have A Strong Neck?”

This video creates a number of questions which I have answered on this video.

Have a watch. If you have more questions then pop over to my Instagram channel and ask me over there.

Below is the transcription if you’d prefer to read:

The video has been transcribed as follows:

—

(00:01) Hey parents, um so this is kind of part two of does your baby have a strong neck.
(00:05) And I got asked a really uh interesting good question: Is it good or bad having a
(00:11) strong neck for your baby? Well, it’s NE, it’s I don’t usually want to say bad things
(00:16) um about your baby, but it could be tricky. So if a baby is just a few days
(00:21) old and has a strong neck, you don’t really think that a baby that is only a
(00:25) few days old should have a strong neck; they haven’t started developing yet into
(00:30) this back position which should be tummy time and crawling and things. So the the
(00:36) stiffness in the neck is usually from the delivery. Is it bad? Well, is it doing
(00:42) something that makes your baby hard or makes them cry? So for example, if they’re
(00:49) strong here, are they pulling off you when you’re feeding? So in that case, is
(00:54) making feeding hard. If they’re looking in one direction, are they looking away
(00:59) away from you so you don’t get a good latch? They’re turning away, so that’s
(01:04) making breastfeeding hard again. If they’re stiff and arching like this, do
(01:10) they not like laying on their back like this? So therefore, your baby doesn’t like
(01:14) laying on their back, and then doesn’t sleep well. So you have to hold
(01:18) them like this with their head like this, so you’re holding them the whole time. So
(01:25) is it bad? It’s common, I see it all the time, there’s nothing wrong with your
(01:29) baby, it’s just the situation of the delivery. But is it bad in respects of
(01:35) your baby’s tricky? Then you could say yes, because you have to hold them the
(01:40) whole time, feeding’s really hard. It also means that possibly they had a
(01:46) traumatic delivery to get them stiff there. So did they have lots of
(01:50) contractions, did they have forceps, did they have a vacuum extraction, have they got tensions
(01:55) that need releasing? So, okay, it’s not bad, it’s just a thing. Is it making them
(02:02) tricky for you? Does it now make sense to help you understand your baby, that you
(02:08) had that delivery because you’re getting told all babies are like that. You’re
(02:14) not getting told anything about the delivery. No one’s saying to you, well,
(02:17) your delivery was traumatic, therefore your baby’s like that. When
(02:21) your baby’s pulling away from you and doesn’t breastfeed well, you’re getting
(02:25) told all babies don’t breastfeed well. When your strong neck baby hates laying
(02:32) on their back, you’re getting told no babies like laying on their back. When
(02:36) you have to hold them all the time because they’re like this, you’re getting
(02:40) told it’s the fourth trimester, all babies want to be held all the time, all babies
(02:46) want to sleep on you all the time. So is that your baby? Like yes, okay, there’s a
(02:52) fourth trimester, babies love being cuddled, but have they had the traumatic
(02:56) delivery that makes their neck strong? So it’s not bad, it’s just a
(03:01) situation. You might want your baby to have some cranial osteopathy, for example,
(03:06) which I do, to release the tensions out so they’re softer and floppier and they
(03:11) lay on their back and they latch better on both sides. You might want to consider
(03:16) that. I hope this helps, this is part two of does your baby have a strong neck. Um, as
(03:23) always, leave me questions and comments below. Thank you.