Mother’s Ability to Massage her Baby with Technical Guidance from Medical Personnel: A Systematic Review

BACKGROUND: Baby spa is useful for baby’s growth and development. The previous research has shown that when the baby is massaged by the mother, a bond is formed between the mother and the baby compared to other people who do the massage. However, in its implementation, baby spas are often carried out by health workers. AIM: The purpose of this research is to determine the mother’s ability to do baby massage with the guidance of medical personnel. METHODS: This method of writing systematic reviews refers to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews guidelines. Articles were searched in several databases ; ScienceDirect, EBSCO, PubMed, Scinapse, Google Scholar from 2011-2021. The search strategy uses the keywords Infant OR Infant Preterm OR Very Low Birth Weight infants AND Massage OR Oil Massage AND Attachment AND Growth. RESULTS: The results show the chances of success of mothers doing baby massage with the help of medical personnel, the baby massage learning media used were baby phantoms, brochures, pamphlets, and baby massage videos, and the frequency of massage for 10–15 min each time the massage. The results obtained after the mother did the baby massage were the increase in body weight, body length, arm circumference of the baby, better bonding between mother and baby, improvement in mother’s mood, and increase in mother’s positive attitude in caring for the baby. CONCLUSION: This study proves that the role of medical personnel in training baby massage to mothers is proven to be effective in increasing the ability of mothers to do baby massage.