Massage Therapy to Hasten the Healthy Development of Infants

Infant massage therapy combines the practices of yoga, Swedish and East Indian massage and other traditional forms of massage. It involves strokes, lighting kneading and gentle squeezing. Use infant massage as a way to not only hasten the healthy development of your baby, but as a way to bond and communicate.

Infant Massage for Physical and Mental Development

• Infant massage is a natural method to hasten an infant's physical, emotional and mental health development. The key to infant massage is the nurturing effects of touch, an infant's first form of communication. According to Emma Miller, the creator of the Gentle Touch Parent-Child Program, infant massage "tends to regulate, stimulate and strengthen internal organs and improve the functioning of all body systems." Infant massage in particular helps in the child's respiration to become "fuller and deeper," as well as aid in weight gain, better appetite and feeding. Miller also notes that infant massage improves circulation and immunity as well as providing relief from gas, constipation and colic.
  As for mental health development, Miller says that infants who experience massages also learn to "self-console and release tension." The baby learns from the parent forms of boundaries and self-respect, as well as trust and intimacy.

Other Benefits of Infant Massage

• A February 2007 article in Massage Magazine notes that in one study infants less than six months old who were massaged slept better, cried less and seemed less stressed. A study by from the Warwick Medical School and the Institute of Education at the University of Warwick also found that massage affects the release of melatonin, a hormone that helps in sleeping. And yet another study, in the June 2005 Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness, found that infant massage created a sense of self and space in an 11-month-old visually impaired infant. Finally, a February 2007 study in the Journal of the Australian Traditional-Medicine Society found that low birth weight infants gained weight with neonatal massage, and found benefits such as decreasing breathing disorders and increasing daytime alertness.

Massage Techniques for Infants

• First, get together the following tools: a blanket, towel, and massage oil in a nonbreakable container. Then, undress the infant down to his diaper. Massage the baby when he is in an alert state.
  According to Parents.com, to massage her stomach, use your fingertips "in a circular, clockwise motion." For her head, massage with fingertips as if shampooing. Massage her face over the eyebrows with the thumbs outward and brush them over the infant's closed eyelids. For her chest, use both hands and massage outward from sternum to shoulders. Then, massage diagonally starting at one side of your infant's hip and back to the opposite shoulder, then down to the hip again.
  For more detailed information on specific massage techniques, visit parents.com/baby/care/newborn/how-to-massage-baby/.