Objective:  Mother-infant bonding disorders affect a mother’s ability to cope with the care of her infant, and can have long-term adverse consequences for the mother-infant relationship. Evidence exists supporting the benefits of infant massage to improve the mother’s mental health with preterm and low birth weight infants, but unknown among the mothers with full-term infants. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effects of full-term infant massage for a 4-week period on mother’s emotional state.

Design: This is an intevention research.

Setting: Study was conducted in Shiga Prefecture, Japan.

Patients/Participants: Primiparous mothers at 3 months postpartum who were attended in a baby massage class, participated in this study as intervention group (n= 20).

Methods: Mothers were encouraged to massage their infants for 10-15 minutes at least once a day for 4 weeks, starting when their infants were 3 months. The control group was paired with the intervention group by matching the parity and postpartum period (n= 20), and the mother was required to hold her infant for 15 minutes instead of massage. The mother’s emotional status was assessed using a Japanese version of the Profile of Mood States (POMS) and Postpartum Bonding Questionnaire (PBQ) at the beginning and the end of the intervention. POMS assesses six emotional states as subscales: tension-anxiety, depression, anger-hostility, vigor, fatigue, and confusion.

Results:  The mothers in the intervention group had done infant massage every day. No significant differences were observed in all subscales of POMS and total PBQ scores between the intervention and control groups at either 3 months postpartum or 5 months postpartum. The score of anger-hostility at 5 months postpartum was significantly lower than that at 3 months postpartum in the intervention group, but not other subscales. A significant correlation was observed between the total PBQ scores and score of tension-anxiety at 3 months postpartum (p< 0.05), and between the total PBQ scores and score of fatigue at 5 months postpartum in the intervention group (p< 0.05), but not in the control group.

Conclusion/Implications for nursing practice: Through massage, the mother learns how to cope with the care of her infant, and enhances the knowledge and confidence in parenting abilities. This study suggests that the daily practice of full-term infant massage by the mother for 4 weeks may have beneficial effects on improvement in maternal emotional mood.

Keywords:  infant massage; maternal emotional mood; mother-infant bonding