Master the techniques of infant massage and incorporate this joyful and wonderful healing art into your baby’s life with this revised and updated edition. For generations, mothers around the world have known that the soft touch of their hands soothes, calms, and communicates their love to their babies. The latest scientific research confirms that physical affection is vital to the development and wellness of children—easing discomfort, releasing tension, improving sleep, helping premature infants gain weight, even aiding asthmatic children to improve their breathing. Now Vimala McClure, founder of the International Association of Infant Massage, has revised and updated her beloved classic. Inside you’ll find • specific routines tailored to help relieve colic, fever, and chest and nasal congestion • easy-to-follow instructions and photographs demonstrating each step • new information on the benefits of skin-to-skin contact • instructions for premature infants and babies with special needs • lullabies, rhymes, and games to enhance the massage experience • a special chapter dedicated to fathers • compassionate advice for foster and adoptive parents Praise for Infant Massage “Speaking as a pediatrician, the best advice I can give you is to try the techniques described in this book.” –Stephen Berman, M.D., F.A.A.P., former president,  American Academy of Pediatrics “What a brilliant way to love and nurture a child! The first connection between parent and child is physical, through the body; by using the techniques Vimala McClure has developed, your parental relationship will be off to a magnificent start.” —Judy Ford, author of Wonderful Ways to Love a Child “Speaking as a pediatrician, the best advice I can give you is to try the techniques described in this book.” —Stephen Berman, M.D., F.A.A.P., former president,  American Academy of Pediatrics “What a brilliant way to love and nurture a child! The first connection between parent and child is physical, through the body; by using the techniques Vimala McClure has developed, your parental relationship will be off to a magnificent start.” —Judy Ford, author of  Wonderful Ways to Love a Child For more than thirty years, Vimala McClure has worked with parents and babies using the ancient practice of infant massage to help create warm, intuitive bonds of love in families. She is the founder of the International Association of Infant Massage and the author of Infant Massage: A Handbook for Loving Parents, The Tao of Motherhood, A Woman’s Guide to Tantra Yoga, and The Path of Parenting. Chapter 1 Why Massage Your Baby? Being touched and caressed, being massaged, is food for the infant. Food as necessary as minerals, vitamins, and proteins. —Dr. Frédérick Leboyer An Age-Old Tradition A young mother gently cradles her baby in her lap as the afternoon sun streams through cracks in the wooden door. For the second time that day, she carefully removes the tiny cap and begins to unwrap the swaddling bands of soft white linen and wool. Freed from his snug encasement, the baby kicks and waves his little arms, listening to the now-familiar swish-swish of the warm oil in his mother’s hands and the comforting sound of her balmy lullaby. So begins his twice-daily massage. The scene is in a Jewish shtetl, one of the small enclaves in Poland in the early nineteenth century, but we could be anywhere in the world, in any century, for it is a familiar tableau of motherhood in every culture throughout the ages. From the Eskimos of the Canadian Arctic to the Ganda of East Africa, from South India to Northern Ireland, in Russia, China, Sweden, and South America, in South Sea Islands huts and modern American homes, babies are lovingly massaged, caressed, and crooned to every day. Mothers all over the world know their babies need to be held, carried, rocked, and touched. The gentle art of infant massage has been part of baby caregiving traditions passed from parent to child for generations. Asked why, each culture would provide different answers. Most would simply say, “It is our custom.” Many of the family customs of our ancestors, turned aside in the early twentieth century in the interest of “progress,” are returning to our lives as modern science rediscovers their importance and their contribution to our infants’ well-being and that of whole communities. Cross-cultural studies have demonstrated that in societies where infants are held, massaged, rocked, breastfed, and carried, adults are less aggressive and violent, more cooperative and compassionate. Our great-great-grandmothers would stand up and utter a great “I told you so!” were they to observe our “new” discoveries in infant care. Before your baby is born, you may envision yourself calmly and blissfully being a parent, or you may be terrified that you don’t know what to do with this new human depending on you for its very existence. It is fairly easy now, with the Internet, to read a lot abo