DALLAS - She has an angelic face, but little Lillie's lungs nearly drove her mother to the brink.
"Crabby, crying, curling her legs up and kind of going into a ball," said Katie Fox, the baby's mother. "I wasn't sure what was wrong with her and it was hard with her being a baby. I wanted to figure out what was going on with her but they can't tell you. So, that's when I brought her to Dr. Brooks."
Dr. Amber Brooks isn't a traditional pediatrician. She's a pediatric chiropractor in Dallas who treats colic, a condition where otherwise healthy infants cry for hours every day without a known cause.
By some estimates, 40 percent of infants develop colic. In some cases, the daily bouts of crying can persist for over a year.
Brooks said in many cases, she believes colic is caused by pain from skull bones that aren't quite in the right place, perhaps misaligned in childbirth.
"That creates an increase in pressure, which gives them what I tell moms is almost like a big headache," Brooks said. "And, that really all stems from the cranial bones not being where they need to be and sometimes the cervical spine not being in proper alignment."
Using just her thumbs, Brooks uses extremely gentle pressure to guide the bones back to where they belong. It's called craniolsacral therapy. It' snot a one-time treatment, though some patients experience relief quickly.
"I usually see babies twice a week for two to four weeks, and then once a week until they're done," Brooks said.
Critics say the method is unproven and may even be dangerous for fragile baby bodies.
"It should not be painful," Brooks said. "You're not going to push in or manually move a bone per se, not like you would with an adjustment. They're very different techniques."
Fox, an experienced mother of four, said there is no question chiropractic care cured Lillie's colic.
"Completely," she said. "She was miserable before, just crying. It was rough on her. She is just a normal baby now."
