THE BENEFITS OF MASSAGE AND YOGA FOR YOUR BABY AND YOU

Emotional Benefits
When the subjects of baby massage and yoga are discussed, it is often the physical benefits that are considered first, but there are also a number of emotional benefits to be gained by both the baby AND parent when they engage in baby massage and yoga on a regular basis.

Helping Your Baby Adapt To Their New Environment
Upon leaving the comfort of their mother's womb, a newborn can find that entering the new phase of their life is rather stressful. Massage and yoga, however, can reduce stress; which is as important for tiny babies as it is for adults! Regular massage can help babies adapt to their new environment and reassure them. In time, when they feel anxious, out of sorts or in a stressful situation, parents can use massage, which their baby recognizes as a pleasant experience, to help calm and soothe their baby. Studies carried out showed that Cortisol levels ( a hormone we all secrete when we are under stress) were greatly reduced in babies that had a massage to soothe them rather than those that were simply rocked.

Overcoming Intrusive Medical Intervention
Massage and yoga can help babies that have received intrusive medical interventions and may associate touch with a negative experience. If your baby has received some medical intervention, you might find initially that massage and yoga may be far too stimulating and distressing for your baby, but you can overcome this by gently introducing the concept of positive touch to them. This can simply be stroking over your baby's clothes, whilst holding them securely and talking to them soothingly or practising the containment and holding techniques.

The length of time it takes for a baby to become comfortable with touch depends upon the nature of the baby and the type of intervention they received. Gradually you will be able to progress to the massage routine and then the yoga exercises; being guided by your baby's subtle forms of communication. Eventually your baby will gradually begin to associated touch in a positive light and the negative feelings connected with the medical intervention will become a distant memory.

Understanding Your Baby
Not all parents are completely confident about handling their baby in the first months of their life, which can leave the parents feeling rather inadequate and disempowered. The massage and yoga routines are designed to help parents feel more confident about touching and handling their babies.

Through massage and yoga you can learn how your baby communicates with you by understanding their positive and negative cues. These are the noises, movements and subtle physical changes that your baby makes. This may help you to feel more in control as you gain a greater understanding of your baby and you will find that this enhances the mutual respect between you.

Also, with this greater understanding, the communication between both of you should improve so that you are able to recognize when your baby is over-stimulated, why your baby cries, how to help them become calmer and begin to help your baby use their own self-calming techniques.

Bonding With Your Baby
Touch, eye contact, smell and sounds of the parent's voice are all elements of the bonding process between parent and baby. However, because of the pressures to return to work soon after birth, there is a need for parents and babies to become less dependent upon each other very quickly. Also, spending time holding, touching and chatting to our babies happens less frequently and because of this the bonding process may be affected.

The eminent child psychologist, believes that touch is central to the development of the bonding relationship between a mother and her baby. Baby massage and yoga are excellent forms of positive touch and therefore, without doubt, are extremely important tools for you to use to help you communicate with your baby; in turn this naturally helps with the attachment and bonding between you.

Sibling Rivalry
When a new baby arrives into a family that already has one or more children, the family dynamics can be changed dramatically. Older siblings can feel alienated, neglected and just down-right jealous of the new arrival. Parents who are sensitive to this know the importance of helping the older children come to terms with and accept the new baby. Baby massage and yoga can be extremely useful in this process.

If you have older children, you can really help make a difference to the way they feel about your new baby by involving them in the routines, thereby showing them that they are still just as important to you as they always be. Not only that, they may enjoy the new found responsibility as 'older' brother or sister.

They can help by:

• preparing the room
• choosing the music and the nursery rhymes
• holding the bottle of oil
• watching for the baby's cues (helping them learn what the baby is saying).

A fun idea is to encourage the older child to copy the massage strokes and the yoga exercises, that you are doing with their new brother or sister, on their favourite doll or teddy.

Post-Natal Illness (Depression)
Post-natal illness (PNI) is quite common (up to as many as 20% of women experience PNI after the birth of their child) and unfortunately, is often under-recognized and under-treated. PNI usually appears in the early months after childbirth but can occur at any time during the first year of the baby's life. In undetected, a mother may be suffering well beyond this period.

Support And Treatment For PNI
If a mother is suffering from PNI it is extremely important tat she confides in someone that she trusts, be that her partner, family member, Health Visitor or GP. Attending a post-natal group or baby massage and/or yoga class can be of real benefit as these are very supportive, non-judgemental. Often, having the opportunity to share fears and anxiety with other mothers can bring tremendous relief.

Other treatments of post-natal illness include self-help strategies, complementary therapies, counselling, medication/therapy and sometimes hospital-based care.

Evidence That Baby Massage Helps PNI Sufferers
It is thought that kissing, cuddling and prolonged gazing at the baby are indicators of a developing bond. Baby massage can ensure that a mother spends quality time with her baby and will help with the bonding process, thus helping the baby to develop a strong attachment to its mother, which can promote a sense of security in the baby. The child is then more likely to grow up self-assured and self-confident.

Unfortunately the bonding and attachment process between a mother and her baby can be greatly impeded, and in some cases it may not happen at all, when a mother is suffering from PNI. Very often mothers who are suffering from PNI avoid eye contact with other people and often avoid communicating generally. Sadly, this can also be the case with her baby.

However, it is proven that baby massage can help break the cycle of negative or limited interaction between a mother and her baby and is a highly effective way of helping mothers that are suffering emotionally. Although there is no official research to indicate that yoga is beneficial in relation to PNI, as the yoga routine encourages interaction, it can be assumed that it is valuable for improving communication and ultimately enhancing the development of a loving, caring, mother-child relationship, just as massage is shown to be.

Mothers suffering from PNI benefit greatly from participating in baby massage on a very regular basis for the following reasons.

• Baby massage can help stimulate an increase in the hormone responsible for maternal feelings.
• The baby is more relaxed, happier and the cycle of negative interaction between mother and baby can be broken.
• Babies who received massage (rather than being rocked) gained more weight.
• Babies who were massaged had less sleep problems.
• Babies are calmer.
• Babies interact better with their mother.
• The mother's stress hormone levels were lower.
• The mother's 'feel good' hormones were increased.

Fathers
The emotional benefits of baby massage, such as quality, one-to-one loving touch, can also be experienced by fathers too. Studies show us that fathers that gave their babies a 15-minute daily massage prior to bedtime for one month, revealed that they communicated much better with their babies.