I don't have formal training as a masseuse but I used to own a bunch of books on the topic of massage and had friends who were willing to let me practice on them. By the time I had kids, I was quite good at it.
This was sometimes useful for helping my kids relax and feel better, but it also sometimes had much more impactful uses. The biggest impact it had was on helping one of my sons recover from a mild case of club foot.
This just means his foot was bent inward slightly at birth. I took him to see a doctor about it when he was maybe two and the doctor said "Developmental. He will outgrow it."
No, he did not outgrow it. When he was three or four, they finally put him in a cast to try to straighten the bones.
Casting is something that can take months. If the clubbing is significant, they replace the cast with a new one every few weeks to gently press the bones into a straighter position.
My son was only casted twice for a total of about a month and he got two casts in part because he got the first one wet and ruined it. So when they replaced it, they upgraded to a more durable type of cast, one less easily ruined by an active little boy.
After the cast came off he RAN everywhere for months, having been previously unable to run without tripping and falling down. This was true even though he still had lingering issues from it having been bent inward for years.
Namely, the tendons and ligaments were not evenly developed in both feet and lower legs. So I began massaging his feet every night at bedtime and doing gentle stretching exercises at that time to help even up the tendons and ligaments so he would more fully recover.
I was inspired to do so because there were family stories of my grandfather fixing a severe case of club foot in an infant using only massage many years before I was born, so I had a pretty good idea I could make a difference here.
If you have no experience with massage, I encourage you to read up and practice a bit on adults first. The hardest thing about learning to give massage is learning to keep your hands relaxed.
This is counterintuitive. Most people want to press with the muscles in their hands, but when you do that you hurt people. You are basically pinching them.
The strength or pressure for massage comes from elsewhere in the body -- arms, shoulders, back and even potentially legs if you are using a proper massage table and standing up. You want your hands to be a gentle point of contact.
When done right, massage is non-invasive and gentle. It's a wonderful thing to know generally but can really be a terrific thing to know a bit about if you have special-needs kids.
If your baby has club foot, you probably did nothing wrong. It's possible the baby simply found the womb a bit cramped for their size.
This was sometimes useful for helping my kids relax and feel better, but it also sometimes had much more impactful uses. The biggest impact it had was on helping one of my sons recover from a mild case of club foot.
This just means his foot was bent inward slightly at birth. I took him to see a doctor about it when he was maybe two and the doctor said "Developmental. He will outgrow it."
No, he did not outgrow it. When he was three or four, they finally put him in a cast to try to straighten the bones.
Casting is something that can take months. If the clubbing is significant, they replace the cast with a new one every few weeks to gently press the bones into a straighter position.
My son was only casted twice for a total of about a month and he got two casts in part because he got the first one wet and ruined it. So when they replaced it, they upgraded to a more durable type of cast, one less easily ruined by an active little boy.
After the cast came off he RAN everywhere for months, having been previously unable to run without tripping and falling down. This was true even though he still had lingering issues from it having been bent inward for years.
Namely, the tendons and ligaments were not evenly developed in both feet and lower legs. So I began massaging his feet every night at bedtime and doing gentle stretching exercises at that time to help even up the tendons and ligaments so he would more fully recover.
I was inspired to do so because there were family stories of my grandfather fixing a severe case of club foot in an infant using only massage many years before I was born, so I had a pretty good idea I could make a difference here.
If you have no experience with massage, I encourage you to read up and practice a bit on adults first. The hardest thing about learning to give massage is learning to keep your hands relaxed.
This is counterintuitive. Most people want to press with the muscles in their hands, but when you do that you hurt people. You are basically pinching them.
The strength or pressure for massage comes from elsewhere in the body -- arms, shoulders, back and even potentially legs if you are using a proper massage table and standing up. You want your hands to be a gentle point of contact.
When done right, massage is non-invasive and gentle. It's a wonderful thing to know generally but can really be a terrific thing to know a bit about if you have special-needs kids.
Footnote
The causes of club foot are not known. It is something a baby is simply born with and is seen twice as often in boys as girls. I have always heard that you typically see it in bigger babies, which fits with the fact that boys more often have it than girls as boys are bigger on average at birth.If your baby has club foot, you probably did nothing wrong. It's possible the baby simply found the womb a bit cramped for their size.