Benefits
Touch is one of the most significant and nurturing early experiences your baby will have. Research has shown that these early experiences can affect many aspects of our lives. Nurturing touch has long-term benefits and can impact how we think, feel, and relate to others, and most importantly, how we value and care for ourselves.
Infant massage greatly enhances the early bonding relationship between parents and caregivers and their babies. By using gentle, tactile stimulation along with loving verbal communication, a wonderful bonding experience is shared. Strokes can be either stimulating or relaxing, depending on your baby’s needs and developmental level.
Infant Massage benefits your baby in the following specific ways: relaxation, relief, stimulation, bonding and communication for parents and caregivers.
Bonding
Infant massage provides a wonderful opportunity for parents and caregivers to bond with their young babies. Touch conveys nurturing and love, the essential ingredients for emotional and physical growth and well-being. Eye to eye and skin contact, and the exchange of soothing sounds and smells, cuddles and smiles all help adult and baby feel closer. This close interaction helps improve your ability to understand your baby’s body language. You may then respond with more sensitivity and confidence. Your baby, in turn, feels heard and respected, and gains confidence and a healthy self-image as she grows.
In some cases, delayed bonding may occur due to situations such as premature birth, recovery from caesarean, medical complications, adoption, lack of physical and emotional support and post natal depression. In these cases Infant Massage can be enormously beneficial by giving caregivers an opportunity to recreate the elements of bonding. Massage is also beneficial to special-needs children and older children and facilitates deeper understanding, integration and connection with their parents and caregivers. As massage becomes part of your daily routine, you will gradually become more aware of your baby’s non-verbal cues. By taking time out of your day to connect with your baby one-on-one, you are communicating a message of love and security to your child.
Parents / Families
Massage offers shared moments together for babies and their parents and caregivers. It is a useful way for working parents to unwind and re-connect by spending this special time with your child.
This wonderful bonding experience is available not only to mums, but can be also enjoyed by dads, adoptive parents, grandparents or anyone who is the primary caregiver for a child, whomever that may be in your family.
Massage is also a wonderful way to lessen the stresses parent and baby may be experiencing in the early days of their relationship.
It has also been shown to help new mothers in recovery from post-natal depression.
Relaxation
Massage relaxes and soothes your baby and is a pleasurable experience for both parent and child. Loving touch lessens tension, fussiness and irritability.
As you massage your child, important hormones are released in both yourself and baby. Oxytocin and Prolactin, the loving hormones are of upmost importance in motherhood. Infant massage is paramount in this process.
Massage is immediate but the benefits last a lifetime.
As your infant learns to relax and release stress through the experience of being massaged regularly, sounder and longer sleep is often the end result.
Relief
Massage helps relieve common ailments such as colic and gas in newborns, and other discomforts experienced throughout infancy, such as teething and sleeping difficulties. Specific massage techniques are taught to relieve some of these conditions. In addition, infant massage can help your baby heal from emotional pain and upsets, such as doctor’s visits and vaccinations, or the trauma of a difficult birth and other difficult experiences.
Sometimes, your baby will cry when certain parts of her body are touched in massage. For example, a baby who has had many heel pricks may cry when her foot is touched, or a child who experienced a forceps or ventouse delivery may be upset when her head is touched. This can be a healthy release of sadness or trauma that is held in the body, and so it can be of enormous benefit to give your baby the opportunity to express her pain and frustration.
Stimulation
When you massage your infant regularly, her physical growth and development is stimulated in a variety of ways. Research studies show that respiratory, muscular, circulatory and immune systems all benefit form the positive effects of massage.
Your baby may gain weight more easily, and experience improved immune function. In addition, massage promotes neurological development, and helps with the development of motor skills and coordination