Does your baby have a strong startle reflex?

 

Can you calm them?

 

Video Transcript: 

 

Does your baby have a very strong startle reflex or do they start to all the time are they really jumpy?  

 

So you may then Google this and you’ll find that babies naturally have this startle reflex, where they’re both arms, come back so it is natural babies do have that.  But have you noticed with your baby that your baby does it all the time? 

 

That they startle all the time,  they jump here,  you put them down they’re fast asleep,  you’re holding, they’re fast asleep, you put them down jump and they have this startle reflex continuously.  So I can tell you from seeing hundreds and thousands of babies that some babies have this reflex more they startle more.  

 

So I think there’s a baseline to this natural reflex that they can actually have.  But it is something usually from the delivery because has stressed them out. 

 

They’ve taken on this stress then they become more jumpy and they have more of this startle reflex.  So I feel that what it is is that they are just more jumpy,  they’re more on edge.  

 

But a parent may come in and say oh they’ve got this really strong startle reflex.  It happens all the time.  So what we want to do in this case if you want to calm the baby down you want to bring everything down and then they have the normal startle reflex that is in there normally for a baby. 

 

But you want to get them less jumpy and this is possible with the gentle treatments that are available to help baby the cranial sacral therapy or cranial Osteopathy.  You can see someone that can help your baby and you calm the nervous system down.  

 

But also they could be jumpy and in pain from having loads of wind or colic or they could be pooing  10 times a day because they’ve had antibiotics.  

 

In which case you want to get the probiotics in and that starts calming them down.  So they are just more relaxed more calm in less pain and then you’ll see that startle reflex decrease. 

 

Also, there’s something called the gut-brain axis and I talked about this a lot.  I’m sure you’ll love it.  

 

The fact that the gut plays a role is like a highway straight to the brain and there’s tons of research usually in adults.  So we have to translate that across to the babies but basically an irritated tummy wakes up the brain.  

 

So you have this communication,  the gut is your second brain and the gut has more nervous system.   Nerves and neurons in it than the whole of the actual nervous system than the brain.  

 

The gut has more nervous system in it.  It’s totally amazing so calm that gut down and you actually get a calming into the nervous system.  

 

So if your babies has this startle reflex a lot.  You can do the physical treatment to calm them and you can do that inside treatment with the probiotics to calm them.  

 

Then you can just calm them by skin-to-skin holding them,  shushing them, being calm yourself that will translate across to your baby and then calm them down too.