Baby handling

14.01.2023

3 mins of reading

Rita Calderaro-Poczmańska

Pediatric physiotherapist

Baby handling, or your personalized baby handling manual. How to safely "handle" a child? Find out why baby handling is so important for baby's development and comfort.

Continuous medical developments are bringing new ways to care for children. One such novelty of recent years is the so-called baby handling. In the following article, I will introduce you to the best solutions recommended by modern medicine. It is possible that in some time even better formulas will be created, but for now let's focus on the current guidelines.

What is Baby Handling?

Baby handling is a method of proper infant care based on the NDT Bobath neurophysiological method. This method pays very close attention to the ways of carrying, lifting, putting down, changing, dressing and giving the infant to himself.

Baby handling increases the comfort of the child, but also of the Parent. If you know how to do things correctly, you are not only taking care of your little one, but more importantly, your mental comfort. At the same time, baby handling ensures the proper development of the child, and shapes the appropriate movement patterns and muscle tone. Proper integration of primary reflexes is also heavily dependent on the use of baby handling.

Bean – newborn babywearing position

The bean is the most popular method of carrying newborns by Parents. We use it in the first weeks of an infant’s life. What does this position look like? On one side the toddler is snuggled against our belly, and on the other against our forearm. The baby’s head should rest on our elbow pit. This hand, which surrounds the child from the outside, must not support the toddler’s back. Place the other hand under the bottom or under the legs.

The “cold elbow” position

As I mentioned above, we use the bean position only in the first weeks of a baby’s life. Later, I suggest the “cold elbow” position. This item satisfies the toddler’s curiosity about the world. We take the child with his back to us. Slide your elbow under the toddler’s waist and catch the baby’s crotch with your hand. In this way, the baby is in an oblique position, so we don’t have to worry about uprighting too early. Note that this is an asymmetrical position, so we need to change sides – once we carry through the right hand, once through the left. In this way, we also stimulate the toddler’s flexion pattern. Did you know that carrying your baby correctly affects your baby’s acquisition of further skills such as low support? Therefore, never carry a baby facing forward – supporting its head and bottom.

One example of Baby Handling is the proper feeding of an infant

Putting to bed a Baby Handling

Putting a baby down in a crib is also not an easy subject. Unfortunately, many mistakes can be made here. For some Parents who show up at my office, this is the most sleep-deprived topic. Therefore, he will show you how to properly put the toddler down in the crib so as not to wake him up. Very many of you have a problem with this, so I invite you to watch the video. By the way, pay attention to how not to do it.