Home + Parenting + THE IMPORTANCE OF TOUCH WITH AN INFANT – like the language of the womb.
31/10/2023Melinda Webb
We communicate with our hands; touch is the primary language. “
The Importance of Infant Touch
Understanding “comes after “feeling.” It is a language of skin-to-skin from which emerge all of our sensory organs. A newborn’s skin has intelligence and sensitivity; it is through the skin that it knows its entire world, that is, its mother. From inside the uterus, the infant’s back responds to touch, and when born, this contact is gone forever, from the past to the present. There are changes in weight, temperature and how an infant moves, in their power and rhythm.
Our hands touch our baby, first contact with the other, the outside world, we have no understanding of everything the infant has experienced until now. For an infant, this could feel terrifying or loving, a very different feeling from the slow internal rhythms of the womb. Touch and sound are essential; this new touch should accompany gentle, slow speech for reassurance. Holding an infant to calm should speak the language of the womb.
The language of the womb is slowness, continuous movement like the sensation of a contraction, a “peristaltic wave.” What an infant knows from their final months in the womb. Placing an infant flat on their stomach allows them to use touch along their back, like the spin against the uterus before birth. Remembering the beauty of the womb pressed gently and tenderly against an infant’s skin, an all-embracing womb of pure love.
After birth, touch should be deep and slow, with hands moving over an infant’s back, with the flow of one after the other, flowing waves. With a steady rhythm, one hand is still in contact when the other begins.
Our hands are instruments of our intelligence, our will.
Massage of an infant creates touch that stimulates the infant’s understanding of being loved and cared for. Melinda works with infants and children using massage, acupressure and Shonishin, a non-invasive acupuncture treatment for soothing and settling newborns.
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