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