Alison Day was scouted for a track scholarship to Monmouth University in New Jersey and ran as a Division I athlete for four years. She has said the reason she got through it was the team chiropractor, and that the experience decided her career: she wanted to take care of athletes the way she had been taken care of.
The practice she runs now, Better Day Chiropractic, carries her name in its own, and the athletes are still there. But the patients doulas send her are pregnant, and the smallest patients are days old.
It started with two very different paths
Dr. Alison was born in California and moved to Pennsylvania as a teenager, according to the practice’s biography. After Monmouth she completed a master’s in sports chiropractic alongside her Doctor of Chiropractic, and her certifications now run through the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association, the Webster technique for pregnancy, and the Academy Council of Chiropractic Pediatrics, which recognizes her as a prenatal and pediatric specialist.
Dr. Laney was born in Charlotte and grew up in Chapel Hill. She studied exercise physiology at East Carolina, mentored young people and assisted research on children with disabilities, then worked at UNC Children’s Hospital, where she says she became even more passionate about pediatric care and the birth process. She went to Palmer College of Chiropractic in Florida, graduated cum laude, served two years as student council president, and took up weightlifting and CrossFit along the way. She holds the Webster certification and is working toward the pediatric certificate Dr. Alison already has.
The people behind it
A chiropractic practice is its doctors, and this one is two women whose paths crossed at the point where sports care meets prenatal care. The patient reviews that appear on our chiropractors guide describe doulas referring expecting mothers, relief in the final weeks before birth, and gentle adjustments for newborns that parents credit with better sleep and digestion. The waiting area has a play space and is stocked with what one reviewer called postpartum and delivery essentials.
Dr. Laney describes herself as devoted to supporting women through every stage of pregnancy and beyond, including fertility and conception. Dr. Alison’s sports background means the practice also treats runners and lifters, and the two specialties overlap more than they sound: a pregnant patient who trains is exactly the person both doctors were built for.
What you actually get
The practice offers spinal adjustments, dry needling, therapeutic exercise and stretching, spinal traction, nutrition and lifestyle counseling, postural assessment and, unusually for a chiropractor, lactation consulting. New patients book an initial exam by age range. The office accepts flexible spending and health savings accounts.
Patients describe an office that runs on time, doctors who listen, and a room that one called beautiful and warm. It is the smallest practice on our chiropractors list by review count and the one people say they look forward to visiting, which is not a common thing to say about a chiropractor.
The practice works closely with the city’s birth community, and the referral pattern shows in who walks in: expecting mothers sent by doulas, postpartum patients, and newborns brought for their first adjustment in the weeks after birth. The BirthFit professional designation the practice lists puts it inside a network of providers who coordinate prenatal fitness, chiropractic and birth preparation, and lactation consulting is offered under the same roof, which is unusual for a chiropractic office and practical for a mother who does not want a second appointment across town.
Dr. Laney’s plans to continue her training toward the pediatric certificate reflect a specialty that keeps credentialing as the evidence base grows. Dr. Alison’s sports background means the practice never left the athletes behind, and the reviews from runners and lifters sit beside the ones from new mothers. Our chiropractors guide places the practice as the choice for pregnancy and postpartum care specifically, and the two doctors’ biographies explain why that is the niche they chose.
The practice’s online booking system sorts new patients by age at the first exam, from newborns through adults, which reflects a patient base that runs the full span of a family. Reviews single out the gentleness of the adjustments and the doctors’ habit of explaining what they are doing and why, and more than one describes the office as a place a nervous first timer felt at ease. In a specialty that depends on trust, that is the reputation the two doctors built the practice on.
Why it matters
Prenatal chiropractic care is a specialty with its own certifications and its own referral network of doulas and midwives, and Charlotte’s birth community has settled on a short list of practices it trusts. Better Day is on it because of who its doctors are: a sprinter who owes her career to a chiropractor, and a Charlotte native who spent her early career in a children’s hospital before deciding she wanted to work with families from before birth.
The name is a pun on Dr. Alison’s, and it is also the promise. The patients who arrive in the last month of a pregnancy, or the first month of a life, are looking for exactly that.