Infant Massage - Leg

Linda Storm: Hi, I am Linda Storm, Executive Director of Infant Message, USA. Now, we're going to get started and learn some leg strokes. Before you get started in messaging your baby, you want to relax. Your baby will feel tension and stress that you may be carrying with you. So just take a few deep breaths. How do we get started? Well, we like to call is class. We make that contact like I told you and we want to check in with them to see if they are in that quite alert state, willing and happy to have a message. So we're looking and asking and ask that permission so always l was look that A is ask. We ask by taking a little oil in our hand and then we squish our hands together which is the next to ask. As we squish, your baby hears that sound. Now, the second is show your hands to your baby. See if they are still ready to have a message. Next, we're going to make contact. Take your hands and take one leg of your baby. Rest your hands there for a moment and let your baby relax. Having give your leg, Now with one hand hold the ankle, with the other hand, gradually swoop from the hip toward the ankle and then switch. From the hip to the ankle, hold the ankle, then switch hands, just gradually glide to the leg and help your baby's leg relax into your hand. Watch your baby, see how he is enjoying it. Look him in the eyes, sing some rhymes, just enjoy this time together. Next, we are going to go on the bottom of the foot, we're going to be looking at some cues to make sure that he is happy with having his foot touched. Some babies are very sensitive. So we're just going to do a thumb over thumb from the heel toward the toe, looking at your baby, and see if he is happy with that. Should he show that he is not happy or a grimace or roll a movement just gradually lay your hand on the bottom of the foot. He's still going to enjoy that touch. Next we're going to go to each toe. Have you done that little rhyme, this little piggy went to market? Well let's do that now. Touch each toe, gently touching it, now we are going to go the other direction with the Swedish milking. Hold the ankle, and gradually go from the ankle toward the hip, then bring you hand back to support the ankle and switch hands. That hand goes from the ankle to the hip. Now, come back and switch a gentle rhythm gets coordinated between your hands. Watch your baby, how is he liking that. Enjoy your time, looking in the eyes and just have fun. After you've done a few strokes, we're going to finish that leg with just introducing a few strokes so that we don't overstimulate your baby during this. Now that we've done one leg, we'll repeat the same strokes on the other leg. We don't want them to be lopsided.

Now once we have finished both legs, just rest the leg and you can gently take your hands and you'd want to in circular motion on the bottom. You can do this right over the diaper but we want to be relax that little bottom. Nice! Good job. Now we want to go from the hip over to down the toes with both hands. One hand on one hand leg, one hand on the other. Gently glide from the hip down to the toes. All of her leg until they are stretching. How wonderful! Good job!

So that is how we do the legs, next, we are going to move into some tummy strokes.