Hi Mamas (and the occasional Papa!)
This post is about tummy time! I've talked about it before, but now I want to actually get directly into the subject, for this post to be an overall reference for this.
First of all, what tummy time will do for a baby is help him develop his shoulder, core and neck muscles, for one. As he progresses, pushing himself up, weight bearing on the hands and working the whole upper body, is great for the development. Muscle and strength development starts from the body center and then moves away. Hence, tummy time will help the obvious ones, like the shaping of the spine, the strength in the shoulders and the neck, etc, but will also help a baby eventually pick up small objects and even further along the years, hold a pencil right and cut with scissors (all fine motor skills basically). You get the jist!
Ok, a little bit of theory, but very useful theory: The "Back to Sleep" ("Dodo sur le dos") campaign that started in the 1990's, was very effective to reduce SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrom). But then studies showed that just at 6months, you can see many delays (not just motor!!!) with babies who sleep on their backs versus their stomachs. Therefore, while sleeping on their backs is still the safest practice, when the babies are awake, they should be put on their tummies for supervised playtime from the very very start! I couldn't find studies that compared babies sleeping on their stomaches versus babies sleeping on their backs with tummy time awake (especially that compare cognitive and social skills), but in clinic we see a big difference in the motor development. Sadly, this Back to Sleep campaign might've scared some parents to put babies on their stomachs AT ALL and since is has been launched there are more and more issues with fine motor skills, especially in schools, as it is often not identified before then. (Plus, I'm aiming at fine motor skills here, but there are lots of other issues the arise from this) Supervised tummy time should be done from birth! You put your baby to sleep on his back from birth, right? well do the same for tummy time! Why? you want to shape their brain from the start and make the right connections in there! babies don't stay little for long (as we all know all too well!!!) and as soon as they can climb up and walk, don't even try to make them walk on all-fours!!! hehehe waste of time!!! Of course there are other ways you can reinforce their upper body strength if they're passed their tummy/crawling phase (so don't get discouraged if you're there right now), but why not give them a good base from the start?!
All that said, please do Back to Sleep, just do supervised tummy time awake as well to outweigh!
Another big problem that came along with "Back to Sleep" is plagiocephaly. Good news??? Tummy time will definitely help this as well! Not to get to into this subject, but a few other basic rules apply if you see your baby has a "flat head": alternate sides you lay him down to sleep, alternate the side you give him the bottle(if you bottle feed), do skin to skin (with mama or papa) on his tummy and alternate sides you lay him down to change his diaper. If you see it's not going away or your baby has a definite preferred side, immediately talk to your doctor about it and suggest getting referred to a physiotherapist and an occupational therapist to help.
Now that I've got you convinced on Tummy Time, I'm working on Part 2 of this with a list of Play Ideas. My part 3 will be for older kids that are having issues with fine motor skills now and want ideas to go back to basics.
So stay tuned and I'll post as soon as I find my list makes some sense! haha
Enjoy
V
No comments:
Post a Comment