THE RIGHT TOUCH: THE ART OF INFANT MASSAGE

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It's one of life's simple pleasures (massage has long been enjoyed by adults), and research is showing that babies grow better and act better when they are on the receiving end of the right touch. Infant massage is a skin-to-skin connection that helps parents and baby better read each other's body language � without saying a word.

Besides the fact that it is just plain fun to touch your baby, infant massage helps babies grow and develop better. Other cultures highly value touch to help babies grow. In some Eastern societies a mother is reprimanded if she doesn't give her baby a daily massage. One of the most exciting areas of research is the connection between touch and growth. Touched babies thrive, and here's why.

Animal researchers have recognized the connection between a mother animal's licking her offspring and how well her babies grow. When newborn pups were deprived of their mother's frequent licking (equivalent to infant massage), the level of growth hormone decreased, and the pups stopped growing. Even injecting growth hormone into the untouched pups would not cause them to grow. Only when the mother animal's touching and licking were restarted did the pups resume their growth.

Researchers have found that human babies deprived of touch showed decreased growth hormone and developed a condition called psychosocial dwarfism; even more amazingly they also did not grow when given injections of growth hormone. Only when given human touch did these infants grow. This finding implies that touch causes something beneficial to occur at the cellular level that makes the cells respond to growth hormone. Yes, there is something magical about a parent's touch.

Several employed mothers in our practice use an evening infant massage as a tool to help them reconnect with their baby after being away for the day. This special touch enables them to tune into baby and tune out their work as they reenter home life.

For dads who are novices at caring for babies, massage is a hands-on course in baby handling. Also, it's important for baby to get used to dad's touch as well as mom's. Babies thrive on different strokes.

High-need babies have tense muscles that need help relaxing. Every baby needs lots of touching. High-need babies need more (of course!). There is no touch more soothing than that of skin on skin, although for some babies, skin- to-skin contact can actually be stimulating, so you have to proceed with caution. Infants who spend time in neonatal intensive care units after birth tend to have a high need for pleasant touch, since so much of the touching they experienced in the hospital was painful. Some very sensitive high-need babies � dubbed "uncuddly babies" � actually pull away from being touched because they find it threatening or overstimulating. In this case, a routine of careful, gentle touches can gradually accustom this baby to being handled and will help him eventually enjoy touching.

Massage is a touch you do with your baby, not to your baby. It's an interaction, not a task. You learn which strokes your baby enjoys and, as if dancing, go with the flow of your baby's body language. While it is nearly impossible to rub your baby the wrong way, here's how to learn the right touch for your baby.

Choose a time when you are not in a hurry, not likely to be interrupted, and baby is most in need of relaxing. Some parents like to start the day off with a morning massage. Some prefer a before-nap massage. Babies with evening colic are best massaged toward late afternoon or early evening before the "happy hour" of colic begins. Sometimes a late-afternoon massage can prompt the colicky infant to forget his evening blast.

Veteran infant-massage instructors stress the importance of respecting baby's desire for a massage. They advise, before laying on hands, asking baby's permission � "Would you like a massage?" Babies become attentive to a setting event, a group of events that signal a familiar event will follow. When baby sees you rubbing oil into your hands and hears you pronouncing the cue word "massage," watch for his face to light up approvingly. If baby is upset, it's best to postpone the massage and just hold him awhile or use other comforting techniques. Remember, massage is something you do with your baby; if he's not "with" you, wait until a better time. If he becomes upset during the massage at any point, stop and just hold him. Massage is not meant to be like a Band-Aid that you apply to a baby who is hurting, but rather a process that equips baby (and you, too) to be better able to handle life's stresses.

If baby is wiggling or appears stiff and tense, open the ritual with a touch-relaxation technique: Engage baby in eye-to-eye contact before you start. Grasp baby's wiggly or tense legs and bicycle them while speaking softly, "Relax, relax�" This opener sets baby up to associate the touch-relaxation motions and sounds with the pleasant ritual to follow. This is baby's opening cue that the play is about to begin. And relax yourself. A tense baby doesn't relax to the touch of tense hands. Read and feel the response of your baby rather than making massage a mechanical exercise.

Go! Begin with the legs, the easiest to work with and the easiest part for baby to accept. Hold the foot with one hand and "milk" the leg from ankle to thigh with the other. Then, hold the thigh with both hands, as if holding a baseball bat, and using a gentle twisting and squeezing motion, move your hands from thigh to foot. Finally, roll the leg between your hands from knee to ankle. As you move down the leg to the foot, do a series of thumb presses with your hand encircling the ankle and foot. For the finishing touch, lightly stroke the legs from thigh to feet before you move onto the trunk.

To massage the abdomen, slide your whole palm and fingers in a hand-over-hand circular motion, working from the rib cage downward. Next, slide both hands around the abdomen in clockwise circular movements. To relax a tense, bloated abdomen try the "I Love U" stroke . Finally, using fingertip pressure, try "walking" over the abdomen.

For the chest, slide both hands along the rib cage from center to sides and back again, like flattening the pages in a book.

The arms and hands are done in the same fashion as the legs and the feet, beginning, however, with a "pit stop" (massaging the lymph nodes in the armpit).

The face has special strokes all its own � whole-handed smoothing; lightly pressing, pushing, and circling with the thumbs; and finally combing from forehead over cheeks with light fingertip strokes.

Last, do the back, everyone's favorite. With the pads of your fingers, lightly rub small circles all over the back. Then gently come with the fingertips from back over buttocks and legs to ankles.

These strokes are the main ones that our infant massage instructor teaches to the patients in our practice. There are many other creative touches that you and your baby will work out together as you learn the art of infant massage. You might also take a look at the book by Vimala Schneider (Bantam Books, 1989), complete with photographs illustrating the strokes. Remember, as in all aspects of parenting, read your baby along with the book. You can also purchase videotapes to learn the technique or obtain the services of a certified infant-massage instructor who can teach you personally.

Giving your baby a massage is like reading a long poem. If both of you are in the mood to hear the whole poem, you start at the beginning and go line by line in an orderly sequence (baby knows what to expect). If time is short or the setting is not conducive to poetic retreat you can jump in anywhere with a few favorite lines that you have memorized. For example, if you have had the whole massage earlier in the day, then at bedtime it is possible to savor the beauty of the whole by doing only the arm or the back massage to send your little one off to dreamland. Since he has learned to associate this with relaxing, you have a wonderful finishing touch to your bedtime routine, and one that can be administered by father.