by: Oshkosh Spine Wellness Center

Pregnancy is a very real physical change and demand.  Not to mention the many aspects of delivery. “I’ve heard chiropractic care can help me be more active through my pregnancy,” is a common call on the office line.  “And feel less miserable.”  (If they are being honest).

But the funny thing is that there are nearly as many dads, too, around this same time.  Young family, kid number one just arrived, or maybe baby number two is on the way. And now Dad is having all sorts of issues.  “I just need to get back in shape,” is what they usually say.

But it makes sense because kids are hard.  The crawlers bolt away just as you lean over and twist to pick them up.  Somehow the bigger they get they actually want to be held more and carried everywhere.  Even when they are perfectly capable of walking.

And when they want to start walking but haven’t quite got it on their own, that might be the hardest of all.  If you haven’t gotten there yet, it’s not easy being human training wheels when you are a fully-grown adult.  

But that is what happens when the little people arrive.  Every last injury, stress or trauma finds its way back and manages to show up to.  Those old stresses and traumas - the ones that kept you out of that game, or missing ski weekends, or had your college roommates (or your mom) waiting on you hand and foot…  They manage to find a way to come right back.

Just like the older parents say about their own grown-up kids.  Coming back. Looking for money. Or a car. Or you name it. When you think they are gone, those injuries and weaknesses have a habit of popping right back up at the worst time.  

So, when the young parents of young children (or not so young parents, as they inevitably are today), come in saying “I don’t know what I happened?!?”  It’s less of a mystery than you think.  You hit the challenge of parenthood right at the same time as the challenge known as “not-in-your-20s-anymore” began.

And you know what?  It’s okay. Just like it was so hard to imagine having children, and being a parent, when you get there everything changes.  Suddenly a new identity appears, to match where we are in life. So just like expecting parents want to learn all about every last detail of life with the new baby, there are a few details about learning to live the new “you.”

After you have been there for a while, you start to learn the rules.  It’s just that all the books are about the kids, and not about you.

But take it from your chiropractor, young, old and in-between, they’ve seen all the stages of life.  They can help with everything you wished you’d learned about going through life (with a body that doesn’t make sense until after the fact) and wished you had found out sooner.