7 Tips for Making Tummy Time a Little Less…Um…Miserable.

Ahhh, tummy time. If you’ve spent any amount of time around babies or grown-ups who care for them in the last few years, then I’m sure you’ve heard at least a little about this topic. Tummy time — as the name clearly indicates — is time awake that a baby spends on his, um, tummy. This trendy title is apparently a fairly recent addition to the vocabulary of American parents, as very few adults of my parents’ generation (parents who raised kids in the 80’s) seem to be familiar with it. This makes sense, since it wasn’t until the early 90’s that the “Back to Sleep” campaign was launched and, suddenly, babies nationwide found themselves on their backs for much of their early days, causing them to miss out on all that time that used to be spent lying on their tummies.

Tummy time is important because the skills learned while on the tummy are essential for later development. Think about it, most of the big milestones in the first year of life involve the prone position in one form or another (e.g., lifting and turning the head, rolling, pushing the chest off the ground, getting up to hands and knees, scooting, crawling). Tummy time also gives the back of baby’s head a break in an effort to prevent flat spots from forming (something called “positional plagiocephaly”). And, as an occupational therapist, I should mention that tummy time also contributes to the strength and skills needed in the upper body and hands for school-age tasks such as handwriting. Yes, it starts that early!

I remember when we took our son to his one-week checkup and, at the end of his appointment, his pediatrician told us that we could go ahead and start giving him tummy time every day. I knew what tummy time was (you put them on their tummy, duh!), but I didn’t really know what to do because he HATED being on his tummy. He has wanted to move ever since day one, and being on his tummy that early on just reminded him that he wasn’t yet old enough or strong enough to crawl. He would cry and squawk and moan, and it just didn’t seem like putting him flat on the ground was the right thing to do at that time. But I didn’t know what else to do.

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