Mommies Massage Your Babies

Shauna Lewis

English 101

Instructor: Marlen Harrison

Mommies Massage Your Babies

                        The first thing babies feel is the touch of their mother and automatically get attached. The attachment bond is a powerful survival impulse that keeps infants close to their caregivers. Infants become attached to those typically their parents who are comfortable and familiar (Myers). Touch plays a critical role on child development; this can determine how your child ends up in life. Infant massage encourages a good relationship between mother and baby. It gives them a place and a time to be together, free from the worries and pressures of everyday life. Massage can help ease the muscles into relaxation, and when it’s done on a regular basis, the infants get use to it. There are massage techniques that can ease the pain and discomfort of spasm or gas.

One of the major benefits of infant massage is learning to communicate together. Nurturing touch communicates love, this is important for physical and emotional growth and well-being. The one-on-one interaction of infant massage promotes health on all levels – psychologically, emotionally, developmentally and physiologically. Massage improves circulation, strengthens immunity, enhances neurological development, and stimulates digestion, providing relief of gas and colic (Onozawa).

Massage can also give a child a sense of importance and is important in developing self-esteem. However, with human infants, it is not just the touch that gives the beneficial effects of stroking. Researchers found that a gentle, slow, but firm touch was best. Too light a touch seemed to irritate infants. Of course, too heavy a touch can hurt the child (Myers).

At a hospital in Miami male volunteers massage babies in the preemie ward. After thoroughly washing, disinfecting, and warming their hands they get ready to massage the babies. They touch the babies through portholes of the incubator with pangs for protectiveness. This person has to make sure that they are very careful not to hurt the infant. Studies have shown that this technique improves the lives of these preemies.

In her book The Natural History of the Sense, Diane Ackerman says that massaged babies gain weight as much as 50 percent faster than unmassaged babies. They’re more active, alert, and responsive, more aware of their surroundings, better able to tolerate noise, and orient themselves faster and are emotionally more in control (72-73). If this technique works so well then why is this not being done to all premature babies? They are growing faster and sleeping better, and are less difficult to deal with because of this physical contact.

Studies have been shown that unmassaged babies don’t grow as well as massaged babies. Just touching these babies for ten minutes each day has shown great improvements. Premature babies showing good progress have been released from hospitals sooner, and even after being home have still shown progress. These improvements translated into a savings of $3000 per hospital stay for preemies in the massage therapy group (“Field”). I believe that all preemies should have this procedure done so that they can benefit in the future.

Clearly, touch plays an important role in the growth of infants. Evidence is increasing on the importance of touch in early life. Touch is a sensory system, the influence of which is hard to isolate or eliminate and it affects damn near everything we do. No other sense can arouse you like touch; we always knew that, but we never realized it had a biological basis (76-77).Learning to massage an infant effectively may become as important as knowing what is the best kind of food for the child (Myers).

Strong attachment can develop a sense of security in a child and the child is more likely to grow up being more secure with themselves. The emotional benefits of infant massage, such as caring, and the kind loving touch, can also be experienced by fathers, as long as the infant is being touched. It is important to nurture these infants the way they should be nurtured it will only help them mature faster in ways you can’t imagine.

Work Cited

Ackerman, Diane. The Natural History of The Senses. New York: Random House, 1990

Field, T. M. Massage therapy effects. American Psychologist, 53 (12), 1270-1281, 1998. 

Myers, David, G. Exploring Psychology In Modules.  Holland, Michigan: Worth Publishers, 2008.

Onozawa K., et al. Infant massage improves mother-infant interaction for mothers with postnatal depression. Journal of Affective Disorders. 2001 Mar;63(1-3):201-7.
⁴ Beachy 201.

This is a persuasive essay that will convince my peer editor Allyssa that massaging a baby during its early years will defiantly help them grow healthier and stronger. I want to accomplish writing something important and informational that hopefully makes it easier on expecting parents. This writing has shown me how important massaging infants can be and will defiantly aid me in the future when I have kids.

In my essay I accomplished persuading my peer editor and expecting mothers how important it is to massage infants. Showing them what happens when you take the time and bond with your infant. This was a very convincing essay and hopefully has helped someone to understand how important a simple touch can be.

Was I very persuading?