The effect of tummy time and oral massage on infants' oral motor skills as an effort to receive complementary food

Abstract

Introduction: Complementary foods (complementary foods) are additional nutrition for babies after the age of 6 months because breastfeeding alone cannot meet the daily needs of calories and nutrients. But it is not uncommon to find children unable to eat because of oral motor skills. This study aimed to determine the effect of oral massage stimulation and tummy time on oral motor skills which were seen from the baby's response to the first food. Methods: The design of this research was using True Experimental analysis with a post-test-control group design, the population of babies aged 4-5 months was 210 respondents with probability sampling technique with purposive random sampling for 3 months in the independent practice of Gresik East Java Indonesia midwives. The research instrument was a checklist from The Schedule for Oral Motor Assessment (SOMA). Data analysis with Kruskal-Wallis test, and Mann-Whitney test. Results: The results showed that in the group of babies who received oral massage treatment almost all (77.1%) had good oral motor skills, and in the group of babies who got tummy time stimulation most (65.7%) had good oral motor skills and in the control group almost half (34%) had good oral motor skills. The value of p = 0,0001 <=0,05 means that differences in infant oral motor skills in the tummy time stimulation group, oral massage group, and control group. Oral massage has a good impact on the baby's oral motor skills. Conclusion: There are other stimulations that have a good impact on the child's motor development.