Massage in a bottle

This morning, Sam and I went to the Lloyd Park centre for a massage lesson - for dads!. There were four dads and four babies ranging from 7 weeks old to nine months. A nice, friendly group. All of us are first-time dads and the range of ages meant that we could exchange tips and encouragement.

The class was taken by Roxanne who is kindly giving up her Saturday to do the course. She went though the actions on a doll and we followed her lead on our babies. The course is based on the practice discovered in India where poor, undernourished babies would thrive becuase of the massages given to them by their mothers. Now, I'm not entirely convinced of this, but if I can have a bit of Dad time with Sam, then that's good enough an excuse to do it. It also gives Angela a couple of hours on a Saturday morning when she can do Angela stuff (whatever that is...)

It's a three week course, each week covering a different part of the body. Today we learned how to massage the legs and arms. Sam was a little bit hungry due to a slightly disrupted feeding pattern, so we only got through doing the legs before it was time for the bottle. We looked on as the others went through the arms routine, but it was fairly similar to the legs routine. Roxanne also gave us a printed guide so that we can continue the massages at home.

I think Sam enjoyed having his legs massaged. I enjoyed doing it, so I'm sure we will continue the massages at home. The timing is quite important - Sam has to be in a 'calm active' state, i.e. not just after waking up, not too active, not straight after eating, but perhaps half an hour after a feed.

I will be looking forward to going again next week (it's tummy and head) and I hope Sam will like having more massages too.

Sam and Dan ready for the trek to the massage class