Tummy Time!!

For those of you who know me, you know that when I undertake a new project, a new hobby, a new venture of any kind, I believe the first step is to buy all the available tools.  Then I buy all the books, faithfully reading and researching...sometimes right to the point where I paralyze myself with too much information.  Naturally, I undertook my  role as a Mom with the same gusto, I now have a complete  baby sleep, newborn care, feeding, bathing, library if you need it - I've got it.  I am getting ready to feed Sloan solids (sometime in the next 8 weeks), and suspiciously books on feeding solids have started to show up in the mail, and to go with them, a new food mill, baby cubes for frozen storage, a food "cuber" for healthy snacks, a magic bullet, a mini food processor...but I digress.

In a very uncharacteristic move a few weeks ago, after struggling with Sloan's sleep, and now several hundred dollars spent on baby sleep books, all to no avail, I pronounced myself done.  I was done with parenting, and sleeping books, I was going to feed Sloan when he was hungry, and put him to sleep when he was tired.  Because let's face it, Sloan hasn't read the any of  the books, he didn't know what they said he should do, and so they weren't working.  I was only going to do things that made him happy...because I forgot to mention I can't handle crying...ever, at all.  Call this venture:  Happiest Baby on the Block (I read that book too).

In my list of things I was throwing out, tummy time kind of got pushed to the side.  Sloan hated tummy time, he cried every time about 30 seconds into it, and I'd spend 5 minutes making it ok again...not a good return ratio on my time.  This is what tummy time looked like during the happy 20 seconds or so....I had to be very quick to get a picture this happy.

I had read all the literature I understood that tummy time was important, but tummy time made him cry. And I reasoned, it's a very big head, it might make me cry to try and lift that head up too. So every night after his bath on the way to bed I'd gently warn him that, tomorrow we would have to do tummy time...I warned him every night.  Soon a few weeks had passed, and as I listened to other Mom's commiserate about tummy time and how much their baby hated it, I would just nod, and smile sympathetically, vow to do tummy time, and carry on.

And then the e-mail came.  In all of my diligent research I had subscribed toseveral parenting websites (I think I was about 8 weeks pregnant when they started coming). I would read them, note down the appropriate milestones, and carry on.  When I opened up this week's email, and the main caption was "The Perks of Tummy Time" despite my earlier abandonment of advice books,  like a true addict I read on.  Soon I had the WORST case of Mother's guilt, would my baby never roll over, have to wear a head brace to correct an impending flat spot on the back of his head, never sit up, never talk, never crawl, never walk,  all because I couldn't handle tummy time?  As I read on, the guilt worsened, and since Sloan was sleeping, I headed over to the tool pile.  You have to understand I didn't give up tummy time lightly, I had purchased every tummy time tool I could find to help first.  We had a tummy time airplane, two tummy time mats, a tummy time mirror, tummy time toys...all brand spanking new.

As I perused the pile of tummy time materials, I made a vow that today we would do tummy time, maybe not for the 30 minutes recommended, but longer than 30 seconds, which had been our habit.  I selected a tummy time mat given to me by my friends Megan & Tannis, and headed outside.  This was a carefully thought out part of my master plan, Sloan loves to be outside, he never cries outside, so we'd now do tummy time outside.  I set the mat down in a shady area, and came back inside and waited for him to wake up.  When he woke up I became the master procrastinator, I tried to feed him, I tried to burp him, I changed his diaper, I changed his clothes...we had a long talk about the importance of tummy time, and finally I took a deep breath and outside we went. 

I laid him on his back first, and then I gently flipped him over onto his tummy, and instantly realized I had put him on the prop up pillow wrong, except....wait, he lifted his head up, he was smiling.  I quickly snapped this picture with my phone, I had never seen a smile during tummy time before!

Moment captured, I continued to wait, so I could put him on the pillow "properly", 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes went by, still a smiling baby...so I started to look at the pillow, and near as I can tell, I had been putting him on the pillow wrong since day one...possibly making it hard for him to breath, hence the crying, seems reasonable. 

I rushed in to grab my camera, I needed to document this whole thing, I have about 50 tummy time pictures from the last two days, here are a few of my favorites:

I believe in the next two, he may be trying to send a different message to me, possibly, "Seriously?  More Pictures?"  And Ok, lady I've humoured you enough, now cut it out...

I believe a rolling over post is soon to follow, because he is now trying to roll from his front to his back after just a couple of minutes of tummy time - who knew??

Love, Julie