Massage Soothes Babies Best

by Suzanne Zolfo
c. 1996 Medical Tribune News Service

 

Massage has a more calming effect on newborn babies of depressed adolescent mothers than does rocking, a new study shows.

Distraught mothers tend no to touch their babies as often as those who are coot, said Saul Schanberg, one of the study authors and a professor of pharmacology and biological psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C.

Previous research has show that in general, babies tend to respond more favorably to massage than rocking, he added.

In the new study, Schanberg and researchers at the University of Miami School of Medicine's Touch and Research Institute in Miami, Fla., observed 40 one - to three -month old infants for six weeks who were either rocked or massaged by researchers trained in infant massage for 15 minutes twice a week.

The mothers ranged in age from 14 to 19 years old and all suffered from depression.

The infants received full-body massages, which included rubbing their faces, chest, arms, legs and backs, the researchers reported the quarterly journal Infant Behavior and Development.

Although the babies who were massaged fell asleep faster than those, who were rocked, the former group also was generally more alert, the investigators reported.

Tiffany Field, a professor of pediatrics, psychology and psychiatry at the University of Miami School of Medicine, said that the infants who were massaged gained more weight, were more easily soothed and had lower levels of stress hormones in their urine.

"When babies don't grow, it's a sign that all is not going well," Schanberg said.

When a caregiver fails to touch a baby, the infant's growth hormones temporarily shut down. But resuming touch provokes the baby's body to resume the release of growth hormones, promoting healthy growth, Schanberg explained.

Touch is "absolutely the most significant sense we have at birth," Schanberg said.

Touch also clearly reduces infants' anxiety and gives them a sense of security, Schanberg said.