Baby Massage
Contents:
Baby Massage
In the first months of life, the babies often suffer from intestinal colic and gas. Usually, this trouble happens to kids who are under three months old, often colic begins to bother them from the second week of life. In order to cope with this problem, doctors advise various means, including medications or placing the child in a warm bath in the period of acute colic. One of the most effective ways to help the newborn baby to reduce colic is massage.
Baby Massage for Gas
If a baby is suffering from colic, tummy massage is recommended before each feeding. The duration of such massage is 5-7 minutes. Before the massage, it is recommended to warm up the belly for several minutes. For this purpose it is necessary to heat the cloth napkin (you can iron it with a hot iron or leave on a warm battery for a while), then you need to put the folded napkin on baby's belly, cover it with your hands embracing the belly area, and hold the napkin with your hands for a while. After some time, when the baby’s belly is warm, you can remove the napkin.
During colic, we recommend you to perform the belly massage without greasing your hands with baby oil or cream. The reason for this is that the use of creams or oil increases the grip of palms skin with the skin of baby’s belly which can lead to too much effort during the massage. If your hands are a little moist, they can be lightly powdered with talc or baby powder. You can then begin to massage the belly.
How to Do Massages of Baby for Gas
- 1. First, you need to gently stroke baby’s stomach, gently increasing the pressure, proceeding to the light pressure. For this purpose, it is necessary to fold your hands in the form of a “shelter” so that the curved part of the “shelter” is above the baby’s navel, and gently perform pressing movements with the sharps of your hands on the edge of the belly. Particular attention should be paid to bypassing the right hypochondrium area – there is the liver, which in babies protrudes slightly from under the lower rib. Then you need to make several pressing movements from the right to the left (the large intestine in babies’ bodies is located like this). After each movement, you want to perform slow soothing stroking movements.
- 2. The next movement is often called "watermill". With your palms, you need to slightly stroke the belly from top to bottom on its central part, from the ribs to the groin area. After several such motions, you need to put one palm on the belly, and stroke obliques with another stroke obliques with the other palm, first on one side, then on the other side.
- 3. Then you need to perform the counter stroking. In order to perform it, you need to stroke your palms on the abdomen in the following way: your left palm goes up, your right palm goes down in the direction of the large intestine. After this, you want to perform circular stroking on the belly, first with one palm, then with both palms.
- 4. U-shaped stroking of the belly is also effective. It can be done in three phases: first, stroke the baby's belly on the left from the bottom upwards, then slide your palm from the right hypochondrium to the left one, then slide your palm from the top downwards. Then perform the u-shape stroking: slide your palm on the right side of the tummy from the bottom upwards, then from right to left, then on the left side of the tummy from the top downwards.
Such stroking movements when performing massage to newborns, help expel the gases from the large intestine. After the massage, we recommend that you help your baby to release gases. To do this, squeeze the legs of the baby to his tummy and hold them for 20-40 seconds. You can also perform the bicycle move, alternately holding the baby’s legs at the abdomen. The baby will start to strain. Finish the massage with circular stroking movements.