(CBS) In many cultures around the world, it's normal for a mother to give her newborn a massage on a daily basis. In the United States, infant massage is a growing trend and, reports Laurie Hibberd on The Early Show, many mothers swear babies really do respond to it, and are happier and healthier.

Suzi Shelton tells Hibberd her daughter Emma "gets a massage once a day, and I've been giving her massages since she was about one-month-old.

"I first heard about infant massage through other moms. A lot of them said that their babies were not sleeping through the night, so they tried this as a way to get them to sleep through the night, and they had amazing results."

Shelton, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., is one of a growing number of mothers who believe babies definitely benefit from a daily rubdown: "I feel that touch is very important. …If you're just doing your everyday interaction, it's not as special, it's not as one on one, it's not as concentrated or connected. And I feel that she knows that I love her through my touch, so it's not just that I tell her I love her, but I'm actually showing her."

And once a week, Shelton joins other moms at an infant massage class at New York's 14th Street "Y."

"An infant massage is really something that the mother or the father is doing with the baby, not to the baby. It's a form of communication. It deepens bonding, it deepens trust, it deepens love," says Jane Kornbluh, who teaches infant massage.

"It helps them relax. Believe it or not, babies do get stressed out with all that they're trying to accomplish in their first year, developmentally," Kornbluh adds. "The stroking, the oil, the sensation of the strokes on the body are very calming to them. So if they're fussy, if they're colicky, it can help with that.

"Massaging babies has been done for centuries the world over. In many cultures, babies are massaged from day one, often twice a day, in the morning and at night. And the interesting thing is, in our culture, where we have a lot, we consider massage a luxury. In fact, being massaged, being touched, is a basic human need, as fundamental as food, or shelter or clothing."

Dr. Tiffany Field is the director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami's School of Medicine. She's conducted studies on how massage affects an infant's development.

"The babies are calmer, they're better able to absorb food, and they grow better," Field says. "We have documented that babies who are full-term who received massage are less irritable, and their sleep is more organized. …In the first year, their weight was greater, their length was greater, and they performed better on the developmental tests."

Field says you needn't be nervous about touching your little one: "Parents might want to take a class or find a videotape and learn from the videotape. But most parents are instinctively able to do the massage. It comes naturally to parents. You can start infant massage anytime, (but) of course, the best is right at birth."

Over 30 percent of hospitals in the U.S. now do infant massage on their premature babies, as a result of research done by Fields. She found that massaging preemies helps them get stronger faster, stimulates their appetite, and helps them leave the hospital 60 percent more quickly than those who aren't massaged.

There are some dos and don'ts to infant massage, Hibberd cautions: "You don't want to have too light a touch because that will tickle the baby. But instructors say it's easy to learn."

And the younger, the better, because babies get used to it more readily that way, Hibberd concludes.

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