Key points:
1. Massaging your baby helps relieve pain from cramps, gas, constipation, and teething.
2. It promotes relaxation, reduces stress, and enhances communication skills.
3. Massages stimulate the nervous and immune systems, boosting self-esteem and the parent-child bond.
4. Massages strengthen bones, muscles, and the immune system, improve sleep, and enhance motor skills and intellectual development.
Give your baby some peace, here are 7 benefits of massaging your baby!
- Relieves pain caused by cramps, gas, constipation, and teething.
- Lets your baby relax and reduces stress.
- Interaction boosts verbal and non-verbal communication skills.
- Stimulates and develops your baby’s nervous and immune system.
- Increases your baby’s self-esteem and helps him feel safe and loved.
- Your baby will fall asleep faster and sleep more deeply.
- Through touch, smiles, and hugs, your bond will strengthen.
Massages will help strengthen his bones, muscles, and immune system, will get him more active, get better sleep, relief colic pain, improve motor skills, and enhance intellectual development!
How to give your baby a massage?
1. Legs and feet: You can start from your baby’s thigh and slowly stroke down to his foot and then the other way around. Stroke the bottom of your baby’s foot with your palm and slowly make circles with your thumb all over the soles. Lightly squeeze each toe.
2. Face and head: Hold your baby’s head and massage the scalp (the soft spot over your baby’s head should not be pressed). For your baby’s face, place your hands and trace a heart shape, then bring them down together towards the chin.
3. Chest: Set both your hands on your baby’s chest and stroke from the middle of his chest towards the shoulders and then bring them down and back together.
4. Arms: Grasp your baby’s arm and stroke down from the upper arm to lower arm -repeat these strokes on his hands by tracing circles from the wrist to the fingertips and then lightly squeeze each finger.
5. Abdomen: Use gentle pressure -remember that your baby’s stomach is very delicate and sensitive. The tummy should be massaged with your fingertips in a clockwise, circular motion. Your baby’s tummy massage should be avoided if the umbilical cord stump has not healed completely.
Always remember:
- Never massage your baby before or after meals.
- Your strokes should be gentle and firm.
- Always keep one hand on your baby.
