Benefits of Infant Massage for Baby

• Infant-Parent attachment or “bonding”
• Relaxation
• Helps baby feel loved
• Promotes better sleep
• Facilitates body awareness
• Boosts immune system
• Sensory stimulation
• Improves skin condition
• Improves blood circulation
• Helps digestion
• Balances respiration
• Relief for teething pains
• Help waste elimination
• Helps build parents’ and baby’s self-esteem
• Helps you learn about your baby (their needs and desires)
• Pleasurable experience
• Stimulates production of oxytocin (Oxytocin is a hormone which can be produced by both male and female persons during massage. It is useful as a pain reliever and has a calming effect on the person.)

Benefits of Infant Massage for Parents

• Caregivers report feeling more comfortable and confident in their ability to care for baby.
• Parents learn to understand and respond to baby’s cues.
• Parents learn techniques to comfort, calm and soothe their babies.
• Provides an additional avenue for close and nurturing contact.
• Infant Massage is one of the most natural and pleasant methods of providing this
• important early nurturing and an amazing tool for helping parents become closer to their babies.

Infant Massage provides these benefits in 4 distinct ways:

• Stimulates all the systems of the body including the:
• Nervous system
• Circulatory system
• Respiratory System
• Elimination System
• Immune System
• Stimulates the release of oxytocin, known as the cuddle hormone (is released in both parent and child), prolactin (promoting milk production in the mother) and other endorphins.
• Reduces muscle stiffness and normalizes muscle tone

Relaxing

• Helps relieve tension built up from all the stimulation in the baby’s environment
• Helps babies handle sensory stimulation and respond in a relaxed manner
• Helps babies sleep better/ Helps regulate sleep/wake cycle

Relief

• Touch combined with vocalization helps reduce pain levels up to 80%
• Helps tone digestive tract
• Helps alleviate gas and promote elimination
• Releases hormones for food absorption.
• Releases endorphins, natural pain killers, to ease emotional distress

Bonding and Attachment

• Infant massage draws on all the elements of bonding and attachment
• Eye-to-eye contact, skin-to-skin, body scent, vocalization, taste, responsiveness
• Hormones stimulated by infant massage promote bonding and attachment between parent and baby

All Resources come from Infant Massage USA. For more go to http://www.infantmassageusa.org