Salmon and Souvlaki

Around here, we don’t bother with tummy time.  I know.  Heretical.  (Don’t tell my pediatrician.)  We tried it once or twice with Ellie and she hated it.  By hated it, I mean, hated it with a passion.  So it never seemed worth the trouble to try to force her to do something she hated that strongly.  Plus, I’d read somewhere** that when you wear your baby, she gets all kinds of core muscle practice as well because it’s such good exercise holding up her head while your body is moving – therefore, making tummy time unnecessary.  It also never made sense to me that a few minutes of day of tummy time could counteract all the other time that a baby spends on her back (in terms of having a flat spot on the head).

So, we’re following the same path with Mark – no need for tummy time, other than the tummy-to-tummy time that he gets with us.

Like this:

(at 5 days old)

or this:

(at 2 1/2 weeks) 

or this:

(at 3 weeks)

or this:

(at 3 weeks)

or this:

(at almost 4 weeks)

**It turns out that this whole issue of wearing vs. tummy time is quite controversial out there in blogland.  I tried to find the article I’d read and besides the fact that I really have no memory of what specifically I read, there are kazillions of articles and blog posts out there about how terrible or terrific tummy time is for your baby.

And here’s my disclaimer:  Although this post does have a bit of a joking tone to it, dropping out of doing tummy time isn’t something that we’ve taken lightly.  We kept careful watch on Ellie, making sure she was meeting her developmental milestones (at her own pace clearly but still growing and changing) and also tried to keep tabs on the shape of her head.  So we didn’t say, “Tummy time – whatev,  it doesn’t matter” without any thought to the matter.  We’ll take the same approach with Mark.  He’s definitely doing fine now – already stiffening his legs, standing up on my lap, lifting his head and looking all around.  We wear or hold him the majority of the time.  So we’re not worried about him and tummy time doesn’t seem necessary at this time.  We’ll reevaluate our decision if we have to.  I would expect that every parent would do his or her own research and make the best decision for his/her own baby.