What Your Doula Wants You To Know About Root Cause
It’s been exactly one year since the day that life really began for my middle son, Calvin. Honestly, it was one year from today that began the life as we know it for our entire family. One year ago today, we made the decision to move forward with our own decisions, our own research, our own path for the sake of healing. It has been one hell of a year.
Let’s start from the beginning. Calvin was born after a pregnancy filled with struggle (2018). I found i was pregnant with him while i was working as a nanny for a family of 6 kids (plus my daughter), we moved to a new city at 3 months pregnant where i didnt know a soul, and proceeded to be sicker than i have ever been in my life for the next 6 months with illnesses that ranged from a chronic cough, to a GI bug, and anything and everything in between. It was a difficult pregnancy.
Calvin was born (in what I actually identify as my easiest labor) after only 8 hours. I almost birthed him in the car but managed to get up to a labor and delivery suite with enough time to kick off my shoes and climb up onto a bed. Without thinking, I sat in a very odd half sitting/half leaning position as he was emerging from me. My midwife kept saying to me “you need to lean back, baby doesnt have enough room”. I tried my best to move but i was feeling so out of control and simultaneously too heavy in those moments to really move in any other position. As Calvin came through, he was pulled from me (primitive reflex integration loss), identified as “shell shocked”, and his cord was cut immediately (lack of oxygen, loss fo blood cells, and more) to move him to the warmer for resuscitation. He was not coping well with birth (trauma), he had a very swollen and bruised head (from grinding against my tailbone), and was diagnosed with jaundice the next day as well. But ”babies are resilient”, right? Or at least that’s what i was told the hours and days post birth from the professionals.
Regarding our breastfeeding journey- i knew just what to do… or so i thought. After a very rough start with my first baby due to a missed tongue and lip tie, i knew that my son needed to be assessed, especially since our nursing relationship was beginning to present the same painful way as my daughter. However, when the nurse, IBCLC, and hospital Pediatrician looked at his mouth, they brushed it off saying his mouth doesnt “look like anything”. Since i knew better, I inquired with my Pediatrician during our 2 week post birth visit and she convinced me of three things: that the tongue tie conversation was a fad, there is no medical conversation around ties, and that there is no difference in a tongue being tethered to the face than an ear lobe being attached to your head. It’s simply genetics. She suggested i stop nursing to allow my very damaged nipples to heal and give a bottle. I listened.
From there, Calvin was a typical baby. I called him my “two hour baby” because it seemed like every two hours he would need to eat, nap, or get changed. He was generally a happy guy…. Until the hour of 6-8pm when he would scream for no good reason. Every night. I specifically remember sharing with people that he would do this. It was met every time with really no suggestions of what to do, and people would move on after telling me to “hang in there” and that i was “doing a good job”.
Around 18 months and into his second year (2020), i started to see more of the anger in Calvin truly bloom. The typical two-year-old fit was more than a two-year-old fit. It seemed endless. It seemed like it was heavier than i had seen as a babysitter or nanny and even as a mom. It was rising up in him what seemed like every 20 minutes and lasted what felt like 30 minutes. I chalked it up to him being two, him being a boy (i dont know much about typical baby boys being raised in an all girl home with mostly girl cousins), me being pregnant/ postpartum with my third baby who came way sooner than we planned, it being the middle of winter, it being COVID, us being stuck in the house for endless hours of the day…. He was simply two.
But then he was three (2021) and it got worse when i had hoped it would get better. It got to a point where I was begining to show signs of stress wearing too hard on me. My husband was away for training for a new job every day for very long hours, i was just handed the GLD business on a platter as my business partner left the picture, i was looking to escape the endless battles at home that escalated from the two-year-old nonsense fits to the three-year-old irrational all out battles. I was loosing patience more than ever with him out of the constant frustration that came from the noise and overwhelm of three kids plus the fits. My daughter started calling me “monster mommy” when i would get to a place of boil. I was constantly looking for ways to get out of the house and away from my family. One day my brain even involuntarily considered disappearing altogether like a runaway… or even better, permanently. It was then that i realized that the safety in my home had left and i needed to get help. Being as poor as we were, unable to afford anything else, my husband and i decided that we were going to try to enroll Calvin into a preschool that accepted kids past the typical September cut off date in leu of therapies/counseling etc. For the remaining of the year, he was in Pre school three days a week for 2.5 hours. It was the break i needed to allow the stress to come down enough to keep my sanity. It was in that 2.5 hours for those three days i actually trained for the BRM program- a mental ”out” i so desperately needed.
I was so looking forward to Calvin turning four (2022). From my older mom friends and past nanny friends, i had heard that the two’s and three’s are hard, but that the four’s is a new horizon. But it wasn’t for us. Instead Calvin got stronger, angrier, triggered by anything and everything. I started to respond to every fit by just simply trying to restrain him in his bed until he ran out of energy (which would take anywhere from 20-45 minutes. I would do this while his siblings would be left to their own devises on the other room). He had been attending a new school full time as a 4yo PK student and had to switch classrooms due to his inability to handle the day. I was told at our pediatric dentist that Calvin was starting to show signs of a tongue thrust and speech issues and that i should see a speech therapist. I asked again if she thought he had a tongue tie and she said “-no”.
At his well-child check i felt like i should share what was going on in our home now that he was past the typical fit-throwing phase. It was matched with “give him more avocados”. I was done. After he whipped a metal water bottle at my head during another fit, i knew it was time to start thinking of things that needed to change. At this point i had been a doula for 4 years as well and was submerged into the holistic world. I had learned a world full of information about tongue and lip ties and was helping lead my clients to answers for their own babies. I was learning more about holistic living and i started following different people on social media who talked about it.
At some point in that year I came across a webinar from a natropathic dr titled “your kid is not a bad kid”. It was a class about behavioral issues and naturopathic approaches to it. The main point of the 1.5 hour talk was this… you can do everything under the sun natropathically to try to support your kid who has rage and major anger outbursts but you wont see a huge improvement. The ROOT CAUSE of what is happening is a mixture of TRAUMA and TENSION (from a tongue tie) plus a sprinkle of everything else from life as we know it. Essentially what i learned was this: my Calvin was walking around all day with a cup filled to the brim. Any time anything hard for him happened, his cup would spill out with outrageous fits. My cup only spills after a long and terrible day of multiple things happening that are hard and then when the metaphorical straw breaks the camels back, then i would flip my lid. I had resources to help myself find peace again- he didnt. At night i can sleep and let the liquid in that metaphorical cup come down as i rest my body so i could have a fresh day the next morning- Calvin didnt. Calvin was waking up on the wrong side of the bed every day and was essentially stuck in crisis mode. Since the day he was born.
I went right to work following the lead of this webinar. Everything finally felt like it added up. After discussing these things with my husband, we made a plan to not take Calvin to get assessed because we were not interested in using medication to treat him. We knew at this point that there are many things that can cause behavioral issues in children and we were Ready to begin “ticking all the boxes” available that we could be responsible for BEFORE considering something like a diagnosis. AUGUST 22 of 2023 was the day when Calvin began his journey to heal. I am so glad we did.
Inside of one year, Calvin has had a tongue and lip tie revision (he had a class 2 lip tie and a class 4 posterior tongue tie), Speech Therapy 3x/week, Occupational therapy 2x/,month, chiropractic support 1x/week, pelvic floor PT, CFT, a massive diet/lifestyle change, and airway therapy mouthpiece called “healthy Start”.
Turns out, that the tongue tie, tension, and trauma all added up to more than rage. The deeper i got with my searching, advocating, and connecting i learned more and more that there were multiple symptoms in play with my son that all pointed to the same root cause.
- rage
-attention issues/ constantly needing movement
- Amblyopia (lazy eye) and the need for glasses
- tongue thrust and speech issues
- being left handed (right/left brain imbalances)
- bed wetting
- sleeping with his mouth open
- and more if i sit here to think about it all….
August 22 at 2:41 pm was the date of his frenectomy and the day that marks this journey. In fact, i saw the first glimpse of change exactly 4 days from the procedure when after an incident with a sibling, instead of erupting into a fit of rage, Calvin hid and cried… i realized it was the first time he showed ANY emotion other than anger in so so long. Exactly one year later i am so HAPPY to share that after POURING ourselves deep into rewriting the story that seemed written for him, Calvin behaves like a typical 5yo guy. Yes, he still gets upset, he doesnt listen, and he looses control, but only sometimes. But he is far more capable in coping, rationalizing, expressing, and being a HAPPY BOY.
I wanted to share this journey because i want to continue spreading the word about what is capable when you dig deeper to find the right answers. When you find the right people who can cheer you on and come alongside of you to support you and point you to the next best thing. Finding root Cause doesnt seem too interesting in our current culture- fixing problems doesnt feed big PHARMA. But root cause solves. It heals. It protects. its WORTH the fight.
How does this connect to birth? How does this connect with a business that is focused on pregnancy and postpartum? Well, there are 100 things that have a root cause solution regarding issues in pregnancy and postpartum. But even more, as i reflect back on the journey with my son, i realize that our story COULD have been avoided if we had different protections in our birth and different support in our postpartum journey. Turns out, this very personal journey that I’ve undergone has made me a better doula in that i am prepared to support and protect families by using this wisdom. I have grown as a referral source and as someone who is better at working strategy with you when it comes to things that seem to affect the whole body. Ive met a surplus of therapists and wholistic artists through my experience who are ready for YOU. You just need to go and start asking the right questions. In addition, we as a company have moved forward with building in some of those support systems right into our team. Doing body work for pregnancy, trauma support in postpartum, and working with a lactation OT (who is well versed in the tongue tie conversation) can actually support many issues that are usually brushed off. Did you know we even have a holistic doula on our team? We are changing our game to better support you by offering strategies that are going to correct and not cover up.
i feel like after this one simple and horrific year, I am stepping forward in a new season of hope. I am a different person than i was last year this time- introducing myself as Calvin’s mom to his teachers at the start of a new school year without immediately explaining myself and apologizing for the things that they should expect from him. I dont feel like i need to warn anyone anymore. I dont feel like i have to constantly plan an exit strategy when we go somewhere anymore. I feel like i have a reserve to actually parent and not just react emotionally to his emotions anymore. I feel like I’ve graduated with a life degree. A motherhood degree. I feel so liberated for seeking and finding. I hope that for you too. Whoever you are. Whatever you are struggling with right now.
For the sake of the this ONE blog post about this topic, i wanted to formally identify the very things we did and people we worked with to make this reality happen in such a positive way:
- Tonya Halcomb- Fiercely Empowered Mama and Natropathic Dr. And host of Fiercely Awakening Podcast.
- Sarah Moser speech therapist with Blue Skies Therapies for speech therapy
- Jessica Crofton OT with Balanced Babies Therapies
- Pediatric Dental Specialist of West MI for frenectomy
- Linda Kunce DC on Leonard St. Downtown GR for chiropractic
- Maureen O’Keefe with Purple Mountain PT
- Melia Dickins- CFT Therapist
- Precision Family Dentistry -for Healthy Start Airway support
- lifestyle/diet change: began filtering water, removed all food dyes and folic acid from our food, upped his protein and fat intake, limit all processed foods, prioritizing hydration and sleep, remineralizing work, and detoxing efforts.
To all of you. Thank you so. Your hard work with my baby has brought a family full circle and beyond. I promise this… although we are walking away from this year no longer depending on most of these people and services, we are walking away ready to spread the word and share and change the journey for others.
