Baby Massage Delivers New Therapies For Mother And Baby

Online, May 27, 2010 (Newswire.com) - Pick up your local paper and you're likely to be faced with a bombardment of grim or tragic stories. But once in a while you'll come across a story that is truly uplifting, and this is one of them.
Helen Pritchard, 30, from Grappenhall in Cheshire, has taken a painful experience from her past and turned it into something positive - helping new mothers, some with post-natal depression, to bond with their babies through Baby Massage.
Throughout her teens Helen suffered severely from agoraphobia and panic attacks, and far from staying out all night at parties, Helen shut herself away for days, months, and even years. This is not quite true - perhaps 'found herself becoming more and more isolated' or 'found her world slowly becoming smaller and smaller' etc
The illness became so debilitating that at just 16 years' old, Helen was admitted to The Priory in Altrincham. It was there that she discovered reflexology, and this gentle, holistic therapy saw her quickly onto the road of recovery.
Helen rediscovered reflexology during her first pregnancy in 2004, when once again it transformed her experience. Perhaps something about it transforming from and then to i.e from exhausted and tense to invigorated and relaxed (but not essential, just a thought) She wanted other women to benefit from the treatment, and decided to set up the private holistic therapy practice, blueskyholistics, specialising in Maternity Reflexology.
Whilst working with mothers, Helen saw the effects of post-natal depression and knew that reflexology and skin-to-skin contact between mother and child would relieve anxiety and stress and help to develop the mother-baby bond. With that in mind her Baby Massage classes were born. Or With that in mind further training led to her teaching infant massage classes in the local community, one on one to parents and to nurseries.
Helen said: "Reflexology played a huge part in my recovery as a teenager, and Baby Massage borrows the basic principles of gentle, skin-to-skin contact. For mothers who are or have experienced Post-Natal Depression, the benefits are remarkable. Numerous studies have shown that Baby Massage improves the outcomes for babies of depressed mothers and reduces the severity or incidence of depression in the mothers themselves."
However, whilst running Baby Massage classes in the community, Helen soon realised that many new parents found it difficult to attend because of their baby's specific routines and needs. Not one to be defeated, Helen set up New Stork Times - an online baby massage service to give parents one-to-one support from their own homes.
Helen said: "I wanted to solve a problem that I often faced both as a teacher of Baby Massage and a mum attending baby groups - babies aren't very reliable. It can be better for new babies to be massaged at home, and ultimately Baby Massage should be done at the best time for the baby."

For more information on www.newstorktimes.co.uk please contact Helen Pritchard direct at helen@newstorktimes.co.uk