Baby Massage
Learning to massage your baby is an extremely useful art. Easy and mostly intuitive, it is as beneficial as it is joyful. Time spent massaging your baby is time spent getting to know how your child likes to be touched and where. This loving interaction and caring touch experience is hardwiring your baby’s immature brain develops your child’s emotional and physical growth patterns and prepares him/her for life.
Massaging your baby incorporates all the elements of parent -child bonding as it stimulates your little one’s senses through skin contact, eye contact and your familiar smell as well as hearing your voice and experiencing a focused response.
Touch, especially, is a powerful nutrient for your baby’s development – it is the first sense to develop, just days after conception, and is important for a whole lifetime: it stimulates growth hormones as well as hormones that relieve stress and those that encourage bonding and attachment. By consciously spending just a few minutes each day massaging with gentle firm pressure, you can help your baby become calmer and happier.
There is good news for tired mums too: a few simple strokes can lull your baby into a deeper, more restful sleep. According to Dr Tiffany Field, director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami School of Medicine, “a massage just before bedtime is more effective than rocking at helping your baby fall asleep and stay asleep.”
Infant massage is not only good for babies, it is good for parents too. Several studies show that mothers who suffer from postnatal depression improve when they incorporate infant massage into their daily routine.
One of the most significant benefits of infant massage is that it can increase your confidence as a parent. When parents regularly massage their babies, they become very aware of the subtle nuances in their baby’s communication, they become more respectful of their baby’s cues and this helps the baby feel secure and calm.
