Tips for Growing Your Baby's Brain
Developed by Kevin Karpowicz, M.D., Schenectady, New York
Tip #11: Massage Your Baby
Learning infant massage can help your baby to be brighter and happier. Massage works best when you are relaxed yourself and when your baby is in the quiet alert state.
- All of your baby's early experiences build connections in his or her brain. These connections between brain cells happen at a very rapid rate during infancy. This is the way that our brains develop from the incomplete baby brain into the complete adult brain.
- One of the main ways babies take in experience is through touch. What matters is the kind of touch your baby receives, and the amount of touch. Infant massage is an excellent way to give your baby experiences that help build healthy brain connections. How does this work?
- As each part of the baby's body is gently touched during massage, different nerve cells and connections are affected. The connections that are made will help your baby to associate pleasant sensations with a pleasant emotional mood and with a caring parent who is speaking softly and sharing eye contact. One of the benefits of massage is that it helps you and your baby to fall in love.
- One study compared a group of babies massaged regularly by a parent with another group that was just rocked. The massaged babies spent more time in the quiet alert state and cried less than the group that was not massaged. The massaged babies also fell asleep easier, gained more weight, and showed more positive mood with their mothers.
- In quiet alert your baby is wide awake with eyes bright, looking around, and not fussing.
- It helps to do some deep breathing and maybe a stretch before you begin your massage. Speak softly, smile at your baby, and add some soft music if you like. All these things together produce the strongest nerve connections and help your baby to reach her full potential.
