Are you giving your baby Vitamin T?

The Power of Infant Massage

How can you resist that delicious baby fine skin, beautiful smell or the precious giggles and chuckles as your baby responds to your loving touch?

Touch is the first sense to develop, just days after conception and in utero, infants are exposed to physical stimulation.

The Benefits of Loving Massage

Massage is one of the most gratifying experiences that your baby can enjoy emotionally for healthy growth and development, and a beautiful and simple way for you, as a parent, to express your love for your baby. “Vitamin T – for touch” is essential for

• better health and growth,
• mentally and physically and
• massaged babies turn out to be more intelligent than those children who are “touch starved”.  
• Babies massaged regularly have been found to be significantly better in neurological development and mental functioning.

Skin to skin contact between you and your baby at birth has been shown to

• reduce crying,
• to encourage mother-baby interaction and
• it keeps your baby warmer as his or her body temperature becomes stabilised by your own body temperature.
• Additionally it helps breastfeeding as your baby is programmed to seek the breast naturally and such contact stimulates the release of oxytocin which makes milk flow.

Of course “Vitamin T” is essential beyond those precious first few hours. A loving massage by a parent enriches a baby’s body and soul, and softens many of the “bumps in the road” for a new baby and his or her family.

Touch welcomes the new baby into the family structure by demonstrating not only that baby is safe and protected, but truly cherished. All parents have that power at their fingertips. And the best news is you don’t need to buy expensive equipment or make radical changes to your daily workload.

Introducing Baby to Massage

To begin with gently stroke baby’s legs when you change his or her nappy and whenever you can in between. Use long firm strokes as good massage must not tickle.

As you introduce more formal massage it is important to choose a time of day that suits both of you so that you are relaxed and baby receptive. The best time may be 20 minutes or so after a feed when baby is calm and alert. 

Infant Massage should only ever take place on the floor and not on a change table.  Find an area which is warm and where light is not shining directly into baby's eyes. Prepare an area with extra towels, nappies, massage oil etc and ensure you have removed any jewelry which may hurt bub.

If you introduce a little massage at a time starting with just one leg and adding extra strokes gradually over several days or weeks, depending on baby’s age, your baby is more likely to accept and enjoy the experience.  It is essential to respect your baby’s cues and level of tolerance and always cease massaging when baby’s body language indicates he/she is tired and no longer wanting massage. There may be some strokes that baby does not like and if that is the case stop those strokes for several weeks and then reintroduce them slowly if baby allows. 

For a young baby (less than 5 months) a bath followed by a massage is far too stimulating.  Keep the 2 events separate and never massage baby prior to the bath as a slippery baby covered in oil is a recipe for disaster.

From stroking the legs and massaging the feet and toes you can move on to stroking around the abdomen in a clockwise direction which is very beneficial when baby is suffering from wind or constipation. It is important not to massage baby’s tummy immediately after a feed and never when he or she has hiccups.

The Permission Sequence Explained

Infant massage includes the firm stroking of the legs, feet, abdomen, chest, arms, fingers, face, head and back and should always be preceded by the Permission Sequence. Making eye contact with your baby rub your hands together (as if you are warming the oil) and ask baby “do you want a massage now?”

The Permission Sequence indicates to baby that massage is available and allows you, the parent, to assess whether or not baby wants stimulation. One of its most important roles is that of teaching babies respectful/appropriate touch from infancy. The sequence teaches your baby that if a person wants to have contact with his/her body they must ask permission first. Babies learn that if they do not give consent their decision will be fully respected.  This is seen as one reason alone for infant massage. 

What oil to use?

Pure, cold pressed organic oil derived from seed, fruit, vegetable or nut is considered best for massage as the oil will be absorbed by baby’s skin and find its way into the mouth when toes and fingers are chewed!!

Do you have time for massage?

Adding massage to your already very busy schedule may seem daunting but it can be incorporated into even the busiest days.

You can give baby a leg or foot massage as you change the nappy and a back rub (skin to skin) after a feed when you are burping him or her.

A tummy massage and a few leg bends will help a baby who is constipated or suffering from wind pain.  In fact nipping these problems in the bud by regularly offering a tummy massage may well save you time and baby the discomfort such problems can bring. 

Infant massage promotes the secretion of dopamine, serotonin and the happy hormones so massaged babies sleep better than non massaged babies and again offering massage may save you from walking the floor with a sleepless baby at 2am!!

To learn more about infant massage please contact 

Rosemary Logan, your paediatric massage consultant.

Rosemary Logan, 2013 rosemlogan@gmail.com

Reference: Pinky McKay, Certified Infant Massage Instructor and Infant Massage Information Services

Attitudes Towards Touch and Outcomes From the Lack of Touch

Attitudes Towards Touch

We all know too well that we live in a fast paced, goal directed, multitask oriented world but our need for touch remains – that’s one of the reasons why people keep pets, so that they can touch them and be touched.

The potency of touch holds immense potential for use and misuse, the potential for harm as well as healing.  The tender, loving touch of a parent has long been recognized as a primal need.  The simple kiss a parent plants on a toddler’s scraped knee is universally accepted as the best medicine. 

But today, with our media full of terrible stories of child abuse some adults are becoming increasingly uncomfortable about touching youngsters. Dr Tiffany Field founder of Touch Institute of the University of Miami’s School of Medicine, Florida,  says "We've become such a litigious society," "Children are touch deprived”. 

As I wrote those words last year a Channel 9 News (NSW, Australia) report caught my attention.  The story’s heading was “Touch too much: pupils protest at school ban on contact”.  The report said: “Pupils at a Mornington Peninsula primary school have staged a protest on their school oval after they were banned from hugging or giving each other high-fives in a move blasted as ‘outrageous’ and ‘unbelievable’ by parents.”  The ban includes contact sports and playing “tiggy”.  

Outcomes from the Lack of Touch

Children raised with a lack of touch have abnormally high levels of stress hormones and a lack of touch can have a profound impact on the will to live. Abused, neglected or touch deprived children learn not to trust touch. They tend to have great difficulty feeling of value, feeling truly powerful, or of forming reciprocally supportive relationships as adults. They are injured by the lack of touch or by abusive touch.

Touch deprived children can demonstrate developmental delays, lack concentration and develop symptoms indistinguishable from autism. The effects of touch deficiencies can have lifelong serious negative ramifications. Frances M Carlson, author of “Essential Touch: Meeting the Needs of Young Children” says “What I think we don’t understand in this culture is that withholding touch from children from fear is as physically and emotionally harmful to children as harmful touch is”.

Numerous studies have shown that children who are appropriately held, hugged, cuddled and touched enjoy better health and growth, mentally and physically and turn out to be more intelligent than those children who are “touch starved”.  

Infants and children who receive regular massage experience many benefits and an overall sense of well being and in their “earliest stages of development have higher scores on physical, emotional, and interpersonal skills”.

Teaching parents infant massage and encouraging them to see it as a lifelong gift for their children and hopefully their children’s children is, I believe, one of the cornerstones in the building blocks of parenting and child development. 

Additionally, the ‘icing on the cake’ is that as many of these massaged children grow older they begin to return this gift to their parents offering them a massage too.  One child has been quoted as saying “When my Dad is angry I massage him and he is not angry anymore”!!

But we need to be cognizant of the pressures of touch phobia and not allow this to cause significant health issues to our future generations. Infant massage may not be the cure-all for that. But it's a very good start. 

Encouraging parents to massage their babies and to continue this practice for as long as possible, and hopefully into adolescents is good for humanity.

When we start touching one another it brings in trust, intimacy, vulnerability and kindness perhaps then there will be less violence, less disregard for human life and more understanding.

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