I have an application that needs to get certain data from the chain, so it syncs blocks off the bitcoind rpc. Parses the blocks, checks if there's relevant data and moves to the next block. I want that application to start at genesis (or some birthday block) and sync the chain from there.

Right now I'm getting the headers first, backwards, from tip to birthday. Then sync the blocks forwards, from birthday to tip. I was wondering whether I could skip the headers part and sync directly from birthday to the tip, forwards.