Touch is important for human beings and, we believe, all other primates.
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Many years ago, researchers found that monkeys who were reared by surrogate mothers made of wire demonstrated mental health problems throughout their lives.
These wire surrogate mothers provided food to the baby monkeys but offered no responses, no affection and no touch.
Since that time, we have seen evidence of this play out for humans. For example, the stories heard around the world about the conditions in which children lived in Romanian orphanages helped us understand the importance of babies being touched, cuddled and being part of loving relationships.
Much of the research with these human orphans showed that those adopted after four years of age (when they had spent their first four years deprived of human touch and human relationships) struggled with mental health issues, and showed impaired growth and development. For many of these children, the damage was so substantial they were never able to catch up to their more fortunate peers.
Some of the children adopted into homes around the world were relinquished by their adoptive parents who found their inability to be part of loving relationships, their problems in responding to care and attention, and their ongoing challenges with mental and physical health and developmental delays too hard to manage.
New research shows that gentle stroking actually helps alleviate infant pain.
Touch and loving relationships are essential for our health and wellbeing. Parents of premature human infants are encouraged to use gentle touch through baby massage and this seems to not only help develop their relationship with the baby, it also helps to alleviate maternal postpartum depression. Baby massage is useful when infants have jaundice as it is found to decrease serum total bilirubin and percutaneous bilirubin levels and increase defecation frequency. There is even some evidence that baby massage helps to relieve infant colic.
Another form of touch between parent and baby is called kangaroo care. This requires long periods of skin-to-skin contact between parent and newborn baby not just in the hospital after the birth but for some time after they have gone home. Kangaroo care is particularly important in supporting healthy growth and development of infants born at a very low birth weight and it also helps improve breast feeding rates.
Kangaroo care has to be offered by a real person and this can sometimes be difficult as parents are busy and are not always able to spend a lot of time in skin-to-skin contact. While there have been substitutes proposed (eg a mattress that simulates parental heart beat and breathing movements) these do not have the same impact on infants.
New research shows that gentle stroking actually helps alleviate infant pain. This research monitored the brain activity of infants while they were having blood tests.
The infants who were gently stroked with a soft brush showed 40 per cent less activity in the areas of their brain that link to feeling pain. The most beneficial stroking was at around 3cm per second. This stimulated a group of sensors in the skin called C-tactile afferents.
Pleasurable touch is an important part of building loving relationships between parents and their baby. For many parents, the most effective touch is something they do instinctively – for example the three-second stroking movement is one that many, many adults offer without thinking about what they are doing.
Formal activities such as baby massage and kangaroo care are simply ways of explaining what many adults do naturally with children, and ways that we recognise the importance of these natural touches.
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