Malays. Appl. Biol. (2018) 47(1): 189–194
EXPERIENCE OF MOTHERS’ LEARNING AND
DOING INFANT MASSAGE
KIM GEOK CHAN1*, SALOMA PAWI1, SHALIN LEE1, EMILY HII2, CHOR YAU OOI2,
ZURRAINI ARABI2 and HELMY HAZMI3
1Department of Nursing, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak
2Department of Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak
3Department of Community Medicine and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences,
Universiti Malaysia Sarawak
*E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Accepted 21 January 2018, Published online 31 March 2018
ABSTRACT
The practice of infant massage has been reported to give relaxation and enjoyment to mothers and babies. This qualitative study aimed to explore mothers’ experience with learning and doing infant massage. Mothers whose babies four to six weeks old were taught the adapted baby massage program over four sessions by a certified infant massage instructor in the selected health centers. They were asked to do infant massage for 15 minutes twice a day. As part of a main study, nine of the mothers were recruited as study participants at the end of the teaching sessions using a purposive sampling procedure. In-depth interviews were conducted to explore their experience with learning and doing baby massage. Mothers’ experience with baby’s relaxation and sleep, baby-mother bonding, new learnings in term of a helpful baby-care skill, responding to baby cues, establishing new care routine, gaining spousal and other mothers’ supports apparently contributed to their positive experience of learning and doing massage with their babies. Findings supplement the evidence base which could influence service provision to include infant massage as part of the maternal and childcare service.
Key words: Experience, infant massage, mothers, qualitative study
