To suggest that newborns needing to lie flat in prams ect is a load of old tripe?

[fannybaws]

Every time I hear this referred to I want to jump up and down a bit, the notion that babies need to lie flat "for their spine/back "
Is it simply a bit of old marketing from a pram manufacturer that has become lodged in the national psyche???

YABU.

It's never been lodged in any bit of me! Is this some new bit of angst or did I just miss it completely?

Loving your use of 'ect' molesworth. iirc, it's not advised for preemies etc as lying at a downward angle creates a bit of a squish on the lungs.

No it's not, it's bad for them to be all hunched up, and it impairs their breathing too.

Is it something you hear a lot?

If they're sat up then it's going to be in a bouncy chair/car seat, I just thought it was because they'd be more comfortable being able to move about when they're sleeping?

Um, not really.

Small babies desaturate (their oxygen levels drop) when curled up in car seat type positions for too long.

Not sure about their spines but certainly unsupported newborns look very uncomfortable in pushchairs.

Stretching out would move wind about too wouldn't it?

yep, squished lungs. Perardua MD.

YABU.

Who's molesworth perAr6ua? (fuck, your MN name's hard to type )

Or was that a spell check thingy?

YABU

Molesworth from 'Down With Skool' used lots of ect ects . Call me per...

YABU

Not to do with spine IIRC, but more that scrunched up newborn might have impaired breathing.

You can angle cots/carry cots a little so the baby is still lying flat without being horizontal. I did with dd - propped cot on telephone directories when she had stinking cold, and when ds2 was little and puking ALL the time, found it possible to put the bugaboo carrycot at a tiny angle which seemed to ease the sickiness.

yabu

theres nothing worse than a newborn that cannot support its own head being shoved in a pushchair looks so uncomfortable

I could always see the logic in the "flat back" guidelines but both my DC came out all curled up from the womb and, well, just wanted to be curled up immediately afterwards. They would sleep upside-down on my abdomen for the first few days (both born during heat-waves so I experienced the strange cooling-down where the baby was even though I was baking hot myself.

They were never comfortable being flat on their backs as little babies in pushchairs or moses baskets or cribs or cots. I do think it's probably a big ask for many babies what with the moro reflex. The popularity of slings although I never used one surely has, historically and worldwide a basis in physiology.

When DS was in hosp (4wo) the paed propped up his mattress so he was flat but tilted upwards!

It's not OK for a newborn to spend 4 hours in a carseat, is it? I was told no more than 90 minutes.

Yabu. Due to breathing problems, neck strain and just being damn uncomfortable

Ahhhh Per

Why would you not put them in a moses basket or whatever, at least some of the time?

I've never thought of it as jumping up and down in frustration advice.

I've always wondered about this. Surely babies that are in slings all the time are at least as bunched up as they'd be in a carseat or similar. So in traditional communities where babies are carried most of the time (not to mention, my house where baby carrying is the only way of stopping a screechy baby...) is there a risk of lots of mucked up backs, or in fact is it all fine...?

Maryz, we had a travel system which could take the car seat, and the advice was to not have the baby in the car seat for more than two hours. So for longer trips we'd use the pram body. That was in 2010.

Why don't you sit in a typical car seat position with your head dropping forward and see how you feel after a few minutes?

I'll bet it wouldn't be comfortable.

I suppose slinged babies are also BF so they get to turn to root and move their heads a lot and shift their bodies? I'm just guessing. DS was BF and did he fecking well move a lot even as a newborn...