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TENDER TOUCH
Infant massage helps babies find the connections that help them grow

By Clare La Plante

In 1984, when Teresa Kilpatrick Ramsey's third and youngest child was five months old, a massage therapist friend who was visiting them had a great idea: Had Ramsey ever considered giving her son a massage?

At the time, Ramsey, a nurse by training, was working as the Perinatal Education Coordinator at St. Elizabeths Medical Center in Dayton, Ohio. She knew a lot about infant care, but nothing about massage.

So she let her friend teach her the variety of stimulating and soothing strokes featured in the infant massage bible at the timeFrederick Leboyers Loving Handsuntil she got the hang of it.

Soon, she began to massage her son, David, every day, on a sunny spot on the living room floor. As we got into the rhythm of it, he would open his body, she recalls.

After years as a nurse, Ramsey knew about infant eating habits, bowel movements and blood sugars, but this was new. I had never seen a baby in such a blissful state, she says.

Inspired, Ramsey jumped to enroll when another friend opened a massage school around this time. She graduated in 1988 and brought her newfound expertise back to St.

Elizabeths, where she started an infant massage program. Soon she saw that massage wasnt just helping the babies bliss outit was helping them to thrive.

She looked for cold, hard facts to back this observation, and found them. For example, the Touch Research Institute (TRI) at the University of Miami School of Medicine found that massaged preemies, on average, gained 21 to 47 percent more weight than those not massaged. Massage also contributed to five to six days less of hospitalization, and $10,000 less hospital costs for preemies.

If you stimulate pressure receptors under the skin, you slow down the heart, says Tiffany Field, PhD, the TRI director. You slow down blood pressure, you slow down the release of stress hormones, and you facilitate growth hormones and gastric mobility. [Infant] massage is not just something that calms you down and makes you feel good. It also has significant impact on health.

It also helps to foster the bond between child and parent. At birth, things mostly are done to the baby without any asking of permission, says chiropractor and massage therapist Debby Takikawa, producer and director of the film What Babies Want. This includes the nurses and doctors shining bright lights in the babies eyes, suctioning their mouths, and rubbing them vigorously.

This abrupt transition from womb to world hinders the bonding process, says Takikawa. Instead, in the first few hours of life, the mother and baby should be making eye contact, smelling each other and listening to each others voices. Massage can help repair this rift, most effectively by including the parents. The child-parent bond is paramount, says Suzanne P. Reese, an educator and trainer in infant massage. This is why the bond needs to happen between the baby and his or her family or primary caregiver.

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