A Message From Our Editor, Issue #61 – Mama Minou

While my husband and I were in college, we started going to a chiropractor who helped us regain our normal function. This was after we were told by medical professionals that we were doomed to have “bad backs” for the rest of our lives. What an amazing journey this was for us!

Both of us had injured our backs—my husband during a car accident, and me while hang-gliding. With chiropractic care we both achieved normal function, as well as new levels of health that we didn’t know were possible. My own longstanding conditions from youth finally went away. My allergies to animals were gone, I stopped getting migraine headaches, my asthma attacks dissipated and never returned— even my menstrual cycle became regular! My husband and I decided to become chiropractors after this experience.

But there was one more story that occurred before we headed off to chiropractic college that really opened us up to the power of chiropractic and its insight into family well-being. This story had to do with a certain mother and her babies. In this case, it was our first mama cat, Minou, and her litter of kittens. After her nine-week pregnancy, we marveled at Minou’s natural instincts and ability to birth without assistance. The kittens nursed and grew, but at 2 weeks old, something changed. One became ill, and then two more began to show similar symptoms. Knowing that our chiropractor had worked with animals before, we decided to bring these three kittens to him.

He checked each one with his gentle hands, but to no avail. Two days later we told our chiropractor that nothing changed, and he asked us if anything out of the ordinary had happened recently that could have been stressing them out. Tom and I knew immediately what it could be. Around the time of their births, a large dog had moved in with us so that his family could relocate. Day and night, mama Minou was tense and on edge. Any time the dog so much as peeked into her room, she became terribly frightened. Hearing this, our chiropractor paused and said, “Go home and bring me the mother.” And that’s what we did.

We drove home, picked up Minou, and went back to the office. He checked her spine and found a serious misalignment in her neck vertebrae. He adjusted her twice, and then we brought her home. She settled back in with all her babies, and less than a day later all the kittens became their normal, healthy selves again.

In a previous issue I wrote about the Swahili word mamatoto, which literally means “motherbaby.” It reflects an undeniable truth of motherhood that mother and baby are one entity. In his own way, our chiropractor knew this when he advised us to bring Minou in for care. It was an understanding that helped shape our own practice caring for families years later.

And, as we had our own six kiddens along the way, this truth served us immeasurably. Any time my child was sick, I knew I was sick, too. Any time my child experienced fear, I knew that I was afraid, too. I was more than a mother to them. I was a world in and of itself, reflecting to them our mutual experiences. And I’ll never forget the awesome responsibility I felt to be more, for them, than I could have ever been on my own.

For the raising of the consciousness,

Jeanne Ohm, D.C.