On the subject of tummy time

[mmcirvin]

Today was fairly momentous; she managed to roll over completely from her stomach to her back. She started out with her hands under her chest, which probably helped, but I am given to understand that at 2 months this level of arm strength is slightly precocious. She's been doing the mini-pushups for weeks already, usually just before screaming.

Comments

[twillis.livejournal.com]

You should fit her with little hand weights, build her up a bit.

[jmkelly.livejournal.com]

As a baby, our daughter went through a phase of lying on the floor, moving her feet back and forth, and eventually screaming. I think she was trying to walk like us, but was trying to skip the vertical-posture part and just do the foot motions, and getting annoyed when it didn't work.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

I just talked to my mom, who is an RN (though not in a baby-related field, but she's a grandmother now), and she was pointing out that when I was a child, the common schools of childrearing said "put them on their tummies" but the advent of research correllating SIDS with prolonged tummy-time lead to kids being on their backs all the time, to the point, apparently, that some kids are developing flat spots on the backs of their heads while their skulls are still firming up and fusing. Some kids wear close-fitted "football helmets" while sleeping, to permit the skull to round out.

The drawback of being on the back all the time is the increased incidence of gastric reflux, but my mom suspects that the old diagnosis of colic was really just reflux, a condition that's much more commonly identified these days because of A) technology that can look inside the esophagus of an infant and B) a giant plethora of drugs available to treat it, whereas even 15 years ago, there was just Tagamet, a prescription drug for ulcers, and none of your fancy proton-pump inhibitors like Purple Pill.

(The latter part, (B) is my personal belief that the availablity of treatment might encourage diagnosis. -- I'm sure that the reverse is causing a better market for the drugs, though-- it wasn't that long ago that bacteria extremophiles were discovered causing ulcers, not stress.)

I had to think back about my niece and she was likewise 8-9 weeks when she rolled over in front of me, but it was actually a week or two before she repeated the stunt. Girl likes an audience, I guess!

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Besides the effects on head shape, there are also apparently neural-developmental consequences: kids who are on their backs all the time don't learn to lift their heads or crawl as quickly. "Tummy time" while the baby is awake is mostly an attempt to address that: there's this mantra "back to sleep, prone to play" that gets drilled into parents. It's a bit of an overstatement since no little baby is going to want to play entirely on her stomach, but the idea is to give them as much time in that position as they can tolerate.

(I just noticed that Marjorie's diapers have "back to sleep" written on them in multiple languages, and the French variant is "dodo sur le dos", which is a lot catchier.)

Marjorie isn't developing the flat spot because when she's sleeping on her back, she usually has her head turned to the side; I think it's still a little longer and narrower than the average baby's head, as it was in utero--probably just normal variation. She also spends a lot of time sleeping in the sling or the Ergo carrier, which aren't flat.

[iayork.livejournal.com]

Kids who sleep and spend most of their time on their backs, are a little slower to crawl, it turns out. But it makes no diference otherwise; they simply spend less time crawling and move on to the next steps (har har!) more quickly.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Anyway, from Jorie's behavior I suspect she isn't having any trouble developing arm strength or head-lifting ability, so we're not terribly concerned.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

And I should qualify my remarks by saying that I brought them up as an article of fascinating medical facts, not to tell you how you're raising your kid wrong or any such thing! Leader K. does not require this disclaimer.

I gotta figure out how to schedule some tummy-time in my day-- my own arm strength is probably flagging a bit, though I'm fairly adept at lifting my own head.