Does your baby have a strong neck?

✔️ A Little Meerkat baby…
✔️ Hates laying on back
✔️ Had a long delivery
✔️ Had an instruments delivery
✔️ Was laying low in your pelvis during pregnancy on scans
✔️ Hates the car seat
✔️ Has to be held all the time
✔️ Very hard to breastfeed, pulls off, very sucky / snacky
✔️ Often favours turning their head one way

Do you have a “Little Meerkat Baby”?

Let me describe the most common features of the Little Meerkat Baby BirthType. What I am describing here as with all the Baby BirthTypes is a “pattern”.

A “pattern” is a posture or position that a baby will put itself naturally into and it tells a story of how they were born.

The position is usually the one they are actually comfortable in.

The “Little Meerkat Baby BirthType” is a pattern that is frequently described to me by parents and is very easy to spot when a parent is holding their baby too. As with all my Baby BirthTypes they are actually names that I have hear parents call their babies, so thank you to the parents that coined Little Meerkat for me.

However, most parents instead of calling their baby a Meerkat will say they have noticed that their baby “has a very strong neck”. Even midwives in the hospital often comment “Doesn’t your baby have a string neck”, this could be just minutes after they’ve been born.

I very recently had a baby brought in to see me and the mum said the midwife from my local hospital to my clinic had said. “Oh look you have a Little Meerkat baby! How fantastic that my Baby BirthType are being used by midwives.

A new baby in reality shouldn’t have a “strong” neck, it’s really should be nice and loose and quite floppy and requires some support from you when holding them. This is totally normal. What a baby’s “strong neck” actually is is them being held in the pattern of how they were at the time of birth, which would be stuck whilst having contractions on them. Often leading to forceps or ventouse being used. Some babies I see have been stuck and in and out of about for days! Is it surprising they stay in that pattern for a while once they are born?

If you are thinking that you actually had a fast delivery yet your baby has a strong neck then it could also be caused by a baby laying low in your pelvis and being engaged for a long time in the last trimester. Again, the baby will be held in this position with their neck arched backwards and what is happening they are just staying in that position after they are born. Often these babies have a fast delivery as they are a second or third baby which is why they are engaging easily. Read Little Combo Baby.

Sometimes Little Meerkat babies can arch back so strongly they almost throw themselves out of your arms. Osteopaths would call this an “extension patten”, but I think “Little Meerkat” is more cute for a baby.

These babies when held up on your shoulder will be really rigid. They often don’t like to sit and will push their legs down as if they want to stand up. Since when would a newborn be able to stand!

When you hold them across your arms on their back their head will tilt back a long way as they find this comfortable. Babies tend to move INTO the patterns I am describing. They will find the patterns as a place of comfort. This is how the body works. We put ourselves in the place of comfort even though that place might NOT be the natural or neutral position.

I have noticed in my clinic that backwards arching babies more often seem to have reflux, silent reflux or bring up their milk excessively, although this is not exclusive to these babies. Perhaps the reason being that this tightness in the spine in between the shoulder blades is associated with the area through which milk passes into the stomach. The diaphragm will be around the area too.

When the baby arches back strongly the milk gets forced back up and out, so it’s a mechanical reflux. Not necessarily a cows milk protein type allergy. This would be different milks and medications may not work.

Some babies arch so much when you put them on their back they are almost upside down! Picture their tummy full of milk and then them being upside down, the milk will just come back up out of their stomach and into their mouth. The spincter that holds the milk in a baby’s tummy can be weak and easily allows the milk to flow back out.

Meerkat babies prefer to lay on their front to go to sleep. This is a big issue for parents as current advice is to not let your baby go to sleep like this. They like laying on their front as it shapes them into this extension / arching position which they find comfortable.

Older children will sleep on their front with their bottom in the air and knees up under themselves. Babies may also like laying across your knees on their tummy or along your arms in what’s called the Lion’s Pose and they can be so stiff they look like Superman or Supergirl holding their head up.

Whereas little frog babies are curled in a ball because of a very fast birth or C-section these Meerkat babies are stiff because their delivery was often overly long in my experience. They have been in the birth canal for sometime which straightens them out and just fixes them in that position once they are out. They may have had some assistance with ventouse or forceps too.

Babies born back to back can be really stiff like this too. And transverse positions can too.

Breastfeeding difficulties with the Little Meerkat Baby Birth Type

Breastfeeding difficulties for these babies is a big one. Because they are arching so much they cannot get comfortable at the breast. You would have to have them in a really strange position, with their head facing you and body going away from you at a really steep angle. This is not how you are told to breastfeed and the close belly to belly contact that is taught will be uncomfortable for them.

They favour looking in one direction

These Little Meerkat most often will also favour looking in one direction. A few babies are really tuck looking one way, where’s most often they can look both ways but always seem to look in one direction. Most parents notice they look the same way when on the changing mat or in the crib.

If you put these tummy to tummy with you either their head will be pointing up or down. NOT at your breast. The can lead to painful breastfeeding as they pull off you and you may need nipple shields or have such a painful experience you give up on feeding.

Read and watch the Little Boobshark Baby video.

Good side / Bad side

It’s important to understand that these are only patterns and they will eventually ease of their own accord. However, cranial osteopathy can very gently make this “easing” happen quicker so a baby is calmer, happier and sleeping better sooner, which most tired parents are keen on achieving. When this happens it has a knock on effect to the whole family generally sleeping better too.

There is a strong link in my experience to the Little Meerkat baby and the Food Allergy baby

This is why. Tummy pain and wind makes the baby arch and be stiff but also arching and stiffness can create digestive issues from an osteopathic point of view. So here you have a vicious cycle set up. Working both to reduce the wind and to ease the back stiffness is the approach I personally take.

How to help the Meerkat Baby

Lie with most of the Baby BirthType patterns I release these tensions off using cranial osteopathy.