Tummy Time

Babies these days sleep on their backs, so to build their arm, leg, chest, and neck muscles, they are supposed to spend at least thirty minutes of *supervised* play time on their stomachs each day. This bane of a baby's day is cheerfully referred to as "tummy time."

Being the conscientious parents that we are, Dale and I try to provide lots of opportunities for Adelaida to experience tummy time, even if it comes in thirty one-minute segments rather than the recommended two fifteen-minute segments. Adelaida doesn't much like tummy time, so the happy tummy-time baby often turns into the unhappy tummy-time baby pretty quickly.

We try to pick her up before she gets too upset so that she doesn't associate tummy time with crying. And we always^* watch her carefully so that she doesn't fall asleep, bury her nose and mouth in the blankets she's on, and suffocate during tummy time.

^*OK, I almost always watch her carefully during tummy time, but I sometimes just step across the hall from her bedroom to the laundry room or turn around to fold diapers or get a bottle of water from the next room. But I never leave her for very long!

About three weeks ago, we had one such incident where I laid her down on her tummy in the middle of her crib, ran across the hall to the laundry room to switch laundry from the washer to the dryer, heard her start to cry as I finished switching the laundry, ran back to her bedroom,....and found her on her back in the crib, next to the sides of the crib, crying.

She had rolled over.

I didn't know whether to pick her up and kiss her or cry myself or hug her and soothe her or laugh. So, I picked her up and laid her down on her tummy again to see if she'd roll over again while I was watching (she didn't), then called Dale to tell him how smart and strong his baby girl was.

Adelaida had a *lot* of tummy time over the next several days, and actually rolled over several more times immediately after that. If the tummy time itself didn't make her cry, rolling over would--she rolls over unintentionally and I'm sure it is quite frightening for her to suddenly find herself on her back when she was previously looking up at the world from her stomach. Tummy time now routinely involves her rolling over, and she is just getting to the point where it doesn't scare her.

She was having a particularly good tummy time last week and I had the camera handy, so took a few pictures of her on her tummy, holding her head up. She was looking up at me as I was taking the pictures and suddenly rolled over, directly into a mirror I had propped up in her crib for her to look at.


The mirror fell over onto her head, frightening her, but she quickly realized she was perfectly fine and stopped crying. I really wish I had grabbed the video camera instead of the still camera, but the sequence of pictures is almost as good!