How Does Infant Massage Help Relieve Colic?

How Does Infant Massage Help Relieve Colic? by Vickie Barnes

Colic is a mysterious condition that many parents have a hard time figuring out, even with the help of their doctors. Luckily, through infant massage you can find some relief for both your baby and yourself. When you combine infant massage with other things, you might find that you can almost do away with colic altogether. Never thought about massaging your baby to help relax and relieve pain? Well, it’s time to start!

The type of massaging you use is something you might want to talk with your pediatrician about or even get in touch with your chiropractor and they may be able to recommend a book or class on massaging your child. There are endless books in bookstores, libraries, and on the Internet that will teach you how to massage your baby in a way that will help relieve the pain and the pressure that is causing them to cry and suffer but will not injure their somewhat fragile little bodies.

Infant massage helps for a couple of reasons. The first is that it helps to relax your baby. Slow movements will help your baby from getting too wound up and getting to the point where they are crying inconsolably. A lot of the time just allowing your child to relax will help you both from getting so stressed out and making the situation even worse than it is. Infant massage may also help your child because it helps to distract the baby from the pain they are in. It seems like your child couldn’t possibly be distracted, right? But, they often can with a good massage. Think about how you feel when you are just laying on the bed thinking about your sore back or shoulders, it hurts worse because you have nothing else to think about. When you start doing something else, it takes your attention somewhere else and suddenly it doesn’t hurt as much. The same thing will happen when you massage your baby.

Infant massage actually helps to move gas out of the intestines, relieving your baby of terrible gas pains. During infancy doctors believe that the intestines may actually be kinked, which may painfully trap air inside causing pain. When you do leg massages and even rub the belly you can help move the gas past the kinks to help your child find some relief.

Another reason that infant massage often works is because babies loved to be touched. It’s been proven that babies that are held and touched more suffer less from colic. Just feeling your loving touch may provide some comfort to your child, so why not massage them lovingly to help relieve their discomfort? Colic isn’t fun, but when you take steps to help provide some relieve both you and your baby can get through it quite well.