What My One-Year-Old Taught Me About Health
Article Provided by ICPA, Inc. | By Diljot Sharma, DC
When my one-year-old daughter developed a fever, I felt it immediately, not in my hands when I touched her warm forehead, but in my chest.
As a chiropractor myself, I understand physiology; I knew what a fever represented. I have explained to countless parents that it is not the enemy, but a coordinated immune response.
And yet, in that moment, knowledge did not quiet my nervous system. My mind began scanning, question after question. How high is it? How long has it been? Is this serious? I could feel the rise of my parental anxiety, that surge of urgency that makes you want to fix, measure, control. And then something shifted. She wasn’t panicking.
She wasn’t inconsolable. She wasn’t asking for medicine. She was reaching for me. She wanted to be held, to nurse, to rest against my chest, to hear my voice, to be sung to, to sway and dance while I carried her. She wanted reassurance in its most primitive and powerful form: connection. In that moment, I reminded myself that the fever was her immune system doing its job. My worry, however well-intentioned, was not helping her body do its job. What she needed most was regulation, and she was borrowing it from me.