Our fabulous baby massage routine devised by our expert for you all to enjoy.
This massage can be done as often as you wish.
Begin with your baby on its back, facing you.
The rocking movement helps loosen your baby’s hips and lower back.
Legs
A baby’s legs are constantly strengthening to eventually support entire body weight and movement. Massaging a baby’s legs encourages healthy development and improves flexibility in the lower back and hip joints.
1. With well-oiled hands, take your baby’s leg with two hands and gently shake it. With one hand at the inner thigh and the other on the outside hip, firmly and evenly pull alternate hands down your baby’s leg finishing at the tips of the toes, making as much contact with the flesh as possible. Repeat several times.
2. Placing your inside hand under your baby’s ankle for support, use your other hand to stroke up from the knee and down the outside of your baby’s thigh to make a long circle. The upward stroke, beginning above the knee joint, should be angled slightly towards the inner leg, to then circle outward at the groin, and downwards on the outer side of the upper leg. Do this slowly to feel every contour of your baby’s body, releasing pressure slightly as you circle above the knee.
3. Place your outer hand under the knee, with the thumb gliding on top, gently stroking and pulling down to rest at the heel. At the same time, with your alternate hand, place your fingers behind your baby’s knee, ready with thumb on top, to pull down the under and inside of your baby’s leg, finishing at the foot. This should be an alternating and flowing movement as though climbing a rope.
4. Place your baby’s knee outward, to make a triangle shape. Supporting the ankle with your inside hand, use your outside hand to stroke upwards from the knee, around and down the outside of the thigh. This is similar to step 2 but you are massaging much more of the inner thigh.
5. Placing your baby’s ankle on its tummy and supporting it gently with your inner hand, use the palm of your outer hand to circle around and underneath your baby’s lower back, hips and buttocks. Do this several times, slowly.
6. Straighten the leg, giving it a gentle, playful shake, then stroke firmly from hip to foot with alternate hands as in step 1.
Repeat steps 1-6 with the other leg.
7. Now take your baby’s ankles and gently relax the hip joints with bicycle movements, gently and slowly peddling the legs, with one bending as the other straightens.
8. Place the ankles loosely together. With well-oiled hands, begin with both hands at each inner knee, and circle upwards and outwards with both hands simultaneously, curving around at the hip and pulling downwards to the outside knee. Do this several times.
9. Then repeat the bicycle movement, stopping to clap the soles of your baby’s feet together playfully. Kiss them, and blow on them, and repeat the bicycle movement again.
10. Bringing the soles of your baby’s feet together, bring the heels to rest gently on your baby’s tummy, holding the feet with one hand. Relax your baby with gentle rocking movements. This relaxes the hip joints giving greater flexibility. With you free hand, massage the buttock in large, slow, outward circular movements. Change hands and do the other buttock.
11. Straighten both legs and give a little shake.
12. Replenish your oil, and using your palms, pull down both sides of the body from your baby’s underarms, over the chest, hips and legs. Repeat slowly four times.
Massaging your baby’s stomach aids digestion and helps ease colic.
Stomach
Your baby will adore its belly being massaged. It is comforting, helps release tension and encourages digestion and bowel function. In this part of you baby’s body, there is the diaphragm to assist breathing, the stomach, the lower part of the liver, the gall bladder and the bowel, comprising the small and large intestine. If your baby’s tummy is round and tight like a balloon, it is likely there is trapped wind. Be gentle. The stomach is highly revered in eastern medicine, regarded at the centre of “chi” or energy. It is also an emotional centre and houses the “solar plexus”, a nerve centre located in the dip below the ribs.
1. Begin by warming your hands by rubbing them together. Place one hand in the centre of your baby’s abdomen. Your hand may seem large compared to a little body. With your hand and wrist relaxed, gently and slowly move in a clockwise direction around the abdomen. Your fingers will extend over to the lower part of your baby’s chest. Keep your palm above your baby’s pubic bone. Repeat this movement several times.
2. Loosely cup your hand and place it horizontally across your baby’s stomach. (It may be easier to position yourself to one side). Lift your fingertips slightly and gently, pushing away from you, move your hand across the belly to the other side, so that slight pressure is coming from the heel of your palm. At the other side, curve your fingers down and around the side of your baby, positioned between its lowest rib and hip, then lifting the heel of your palm slightly, allow the hand to draw back towards you, dragging your hand slowly back across the belly. Repeat movement four times. This becomes a rocking rhythm, as though you are pushing and pulling. Done slowly, this movement stimulates your baby’s ascending and descending colon.
3. This next move is like doing a slow dog-paddle-swimming stroke at the side of your baby’s belly. Stay positioned at your baby’s side, and place one hand at a time on the side of your baby’s belly opposite you. Draw your hands up in long, slow, alternate movements, With every stroke, feel your baby’s flesh becoming warm under your hand. After 10 or so strokes, change side and repeat this movement.
4. Finish by holding your hands on your baby’s tummy, feeling the warmth between you, (if your hands are too big, place one on the tummy and the other on your baby’s chest).
Massaging this area helps respiratory tract problems and opens the chest and shoulders.
Chest and Shoulders
This area houses the rhythm of breathing and the core of circulation. Our lungs bring oxygen into our bodies, our heart pumps it around, and then our unwanted carbon dioxide is brought back to our chest and returned to the world.
Massaging this area helps respiratory tract problems and opens the chest and shoulders.
1. Beginning with both hands on your baby’s chest, smooth up and around your baby’s shoulders and back to the chest. Repeat six times.
2. Beginning again with both hands on the chest, smooth up and around you baby’s shoulders and this time extend outwards horizontally along your baby’s arms to the fingertips. Use all of your hand’s surface area and vary the angle on each stroke to cover as much flesh as possible. Repeat this movement several times.
3. Bringing your baby’s hands together, playfully tap the palms together, blowing on the fingers.
4. Then with your hands placed on the inside of your baby’s elbows and your thumbs protectively under your baby’s elbow joints, tap the arms gently but quickly against the floor. This loosens the shoulder joints.
5. Lifting one of your baby’s arms, skyward, use both hands at once but alternately to massage upwards, drawing the length of the arm to the fingertips. When one of your hands is at the fingertips, the other is beginning at your baby’s armpit. This is like the reverse of rope climbing. Repeat this movement on the other arm
6. Finish by stroking down the body from the front of the shoulders over the chest, hips and legs. Do this four times.
Massaging around your baby’s lower back and buttocks is calming and eases constipation.
Back & Spine
Turn your baby over to rest on its tummy with the soles of the feet facing you. A natural reaction may be for your baby to raise itself up using its arms. This is a fabulous movement to help develop the upper back, also called the dorsal or thoracic spine, beginning at the base of the neck and extending to the 12th vertebrae. If your baby is young, it may not be strong enough to do this movement yet.
1. Begin with well-oiled hands stroking down your baby’s back from the top of the shoulders right to the base of the spine. The downward direction is calming for your baby. Repeat slowly six times.
2. Cupping your hands, relax your fingers and wrists and gently pat the muscles of each side of your baby’s spine right to the base. This should make a popping sound.
Follow By Repeating Step 1.
3. With your outside hand holding you baby’s upper arm, and your other hand holding the wrist, gently pull your baby’s arm downwards and backwards in line with it body. This is a stretch, not a tug, or jolting action. Follow this movement with well-oiled hands drawing down your baby’s arm to the fingertips. Repeat these two movements on the other arm.
4. Now do the same movements at the same time on both arms. Starting with both your hands placed on each of your baby’s shoulders, massage down the arms, gently and slowly pulling both arms downwards and backwards simultaneously. Repeat 3 or 4 times. Then repeat Step 1.
5. Massage all around the base of the spine and lower back with an open, relaxed hand making wide circular movements on both sides. Repeat this several times.
6. Replenish oil and simultaneously run both hands slowly down the back of the legs, straightening and stretching the legs. Do this four times.
7. With your inside hand, take one heel and press it into your baby’s buttocks, smoothing around the buttock with the other hand and circling to the front of the hip, back around to the buttock. Repeat 3 times then do the same for the other leg.
8. Cupping your hands, gently pat your baby’s buttocks and backs of both legs.
9. End with gentle fingertip stroking down your baby’s spine, getting lighter with each stroke.
When you have finished the routine, wipe your baby with a soft, clean towel to cleanse the skin and remove any excess oil before you replace your baby’s nappy.
The whole massage routine including Reflexology for Babies should take between 20-25 minutes.
