Gemma was born at 11:10 on 07/15/2015. She delivered quickly after we arrived at the hospital at 9:30. With my three previous children, I had adjusted them within minutes of them being delivered. This time was different, my wife was bleeding and the doctor couldn’t get the bleeding to stop.

IMG_3711My attention went away from my baby and to my wife, as they took the baby away from her while the worked to stop the bleeding. The doctor said that was one of the biggest bleeds that she has ever seen. They worked on my wife for 30 minutes to get the bleeding under control.

At that time they brought my daughter over to my wife where she nursed for about an hour. Then came time for her first bath. The nurse started taking vitals on my daughter. As she listened with her stethoscope, she had a concerned look on her face and called for the other nurse who looked concerned as well.

The first nurse said she got 260 bpm and the second said she got 280 bpm. They let me listen to her heart, and it was so fast I couldn’t even count. They called for the NICU to come assess Gemma. Luckily, all of her other vitals were normal.

Dr. Nathan Baxter and Gemma
Dr. Nathan Baxter and Gemma

As we waited, I walked over and started to begin to palpate daughter’s neck. The nurse was watching me like a hawk to see what I was doing. Just as I put my hands on her neck the nurse from NICU came in and started examining Gemma and so I backed off.

The NICU nurse confirmed the findings.

They immediately took her to the NICU and called for the on call neonatologist to come to the hospital.

As they arrived in the NICU, they hooked Gemma up to monitor her vitals. The monitors only go to 300 bpm, and it was immediately topping out soon after hooking her up.

Alarms were going off constantly from the elevated heart rate.

The nurse was explaining the monitoring system to me in which I told her she didn’t need to. She asked if I had medical training and I told her that I am a chiropractor.

I asked her what could be causing this, and she told me that it has to be a heart defect.

I was told that they would need to care flight her up to another hospital that was more equipped to handle this and I needed to let my wife know. They began the process of calling care flight to fly my daughter to the hospital downtown. I rushed back to the delivery room to tell my wife that they were going to care flight our daughter to another hospital, and that she would follow shortly after in an ambulance.

This is when I thought my daughter was going to die.

As I rushed back to the NICU, I texted our families to let them know what was going on and asked for prayers for Gemma. As I continued walking, I was picturing in my head what I needed to do for my child. Again, I thought I needed to check her cervical spine.

When I arrived in the NICU, there were two nurses working with Gemma. I heard one say she had never seen a heart rate so high before.

IMG_3662The nurse told me that since Gemma was stable, the pediatrician who was in route didn’t want care flight called. He told her that he wanted to see a 12 lead EKG to know what was wrong with Gemma’s heart.

I asked the nurse again what she thought was causing this, and she stated again it has to be a heart defect.

At this point, I wasn’t gaining very much confidence as the nurses faces looked panicked. I asked how long her little heart could handle this rate, and they said they didn’t know. I asked if there was a heart defect and they had to intervene, would they be able to intervene at this hospital.

The nurse said No.

So, I asked if it made more since to her why they wouldn’t at least get care flight to start coming to the hospital while we waited on the doctor. She agreed with me and said she was going to go over the pediatrician’s recommendations and was going to call care flight anyways.

As they rushed out of the room to talk to the pediatrician and call care flight, it was just Gemma and myself left in the room.

As I walked over to her, I began to pray and cry.

I looked at the monitor that continued to sound a constant alarm. I noticed that her heart rate was still over 300 BPM, but also noticed her respiration rate was over 100. At this point I knew she was unstable and didn’t have much time. I began to palpate her neck and noticed her atlas (first cervical vertebrae) was subluxated more than I have ever felt on a baby before.

I adjusted her atlas and her heart rate dropped instantly to 0 BPM with a flat line across the monitor.

My heart sank as I backed out of the room to get the nurses while watching the monitor intently. I looked over at the nurses who were both on the phone and looked back at the monitor. It was then the alarms quit sounding and her heart rate began to rise, first 100, then up to 140. It was probably only about two seconds that her heart stopped but they were the longest two seconds of my life.

I was frozen in astonishment of what just happened.

The nurses, who had both been on the phone, along with three other nurses who were there to do the EKG rushed in and listened to her heart. I was standing in the doorway and was frozen as they assessed my daughter. I remember them saying to their astonishment that everything was okay now and back to normal.

One of the NICU nurses looked at me and asked what happened. I told her that I adjusted her. She asked what I adjusted and I told her the atlas, her first cervical vertebrae. I told her that I was trying to stimulate a parasympathetic response to get her heart rate to slow down.

[quote_center]She said, “What You Did Just Saved Your Daughter’s Life.”[/quote_center]

She said that this was amazing and that you only read about miracles like this happening. I was in shock and amazement of what just happened. As they set up the EKG, my wife was wheeled in a wheelchair into the room. She was smiling when she came in, and asked me immediately if I had adjusted Gemma. She said she knew exactly what happened when she was being rolled past the nurse’s station and heard a nurse, who was on the phone, use the word “miracle”.

You see, when I let my wife know what was going on with Gemma originally. My wife who is an RN, wasn’t thinking about what medical intervention Gemma needed, she has told me she was praying for me to be able to have a chance to adjust her.

So what happened?

She delivered quickly after we arrived at the hospital at 9:30 PM. When we arrived, my wife was 6 cm dilated. When she was checked at 10:30 PM, she was the same. At about 11:00 PM, the OB had arrived and was coming in to check my wife. She said that she was fully dilated and ready to push.

My wife was in extreme pain at this point and was trying to push as much as she could. She gave three strong pushes but wasn’t progressing fast enough for the OB who was yelling at her saying she wasn’t pushing in which my wife yelled back at her that she was. The OB was yelling at the nurses to call another room to tell them to stop pushing.

The bedside nurse calmed my wife down and reassured her that she could do this. The next contraction came and my wife began to push again. As Gemma was being delivered, the doctor grabbed around the base of Gemma’s head and started pulling. I was just about to say something when my daughter came out and I was swept away in the moment of meeting my daughter for the first time. My attention went to my wife who was in tears from the pain. Later we found out that my wife was one of seven deliveries at this hospital that night. Five of them were our OB’s patients, one of whom was an induction and four, including my wife, were spontaneous. So this explains why the doctor was in such a hurry.

The pediatric cardiologist came in about ten hours after the first Supra Ventricular Tachycardia (SVT) episode and examined Gemma. They performed an echo and 12 lead EKG on Gemma and all was normal. He said that he had no clue why it started or what caused it to stop. That is when I chimed in and started to talk about the nervous system and what I adjusted and why I adjusted her.

He agreed I stopped the SVT and told me to not intervene again if it came back because that meant there was a defect with her heart, and that they needed to see it on a 12 lead EKG. I stated that I believed I fixed the problem and that it wouldn’t return. He walked out of the room and later returned with his encounter note in an envelope.

GEMMA NOTE

Gemma was in the NICU for three days being monitored to see if she would have another SVT episode again. I had several negative interactions with a pediatrician who said I shouldn’t have done what I did. She stated that the SVT would return and that I didn’t really do anything.

Since that episode there has been NO re-occurrence of SVT much to the disbelief of the hospital staff.

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My wife and I knew better, if you remove the interference, you allow your innate intelligence to take over and do what it is supposed to do. We have made sure to make all of the follow up visits with pediatricians and she was just cleared by the cardiologist for the next year. I wanted to show them that this wasn’t an issue with her heart.

I hope this leads to more children getting their nervous system checked by a chiropractor. I am saddened to think of how many children are on unnecessary medications.

How many babies are harmed from a rough delivery? How much is too much? Our medical system is failing our kids with too many unnecessary medical interventions. I think we as a profession and as human beings need to get louder. We can’t sit back and idly watch these kids suffer. We have to speak up and let them know there is a better way.

 

Written by Proud Father and Chiropractor Dr. Nathan Baxter