Tummy Time

[ShannonTTCx]

Hey!

I know this is probably nothing to be too concerned about but my little girl is 9 weeks old and hates tummy time (most of the time). We can’t even get her to lift her head when she’s on the floor. She’s not too bad if she’s on her boppy pillow. She can lift her head and look at the toys we have for her in front of her and then she gets fed up. We tuck her arms into her chest to give her more support and try to make it as fun as possible for her.

I tried again today with her flat on the floor and I feel like all the work we are doing with giving her extra support just isn’t working when she won’t even lift her head a little.

Can anyone offer any advice? So hard to not compare, but so many babies I know that are her age can do it no bother and it’s really getting me down!

Thanks so much

Our little one hated tummy time due to reflux and just hating not being held in those early weeks, so she basically never did it on the floor. What we did was have her our our chests a lot, tummy to tummy so she was getting the gist of it all. I personally wouldn’t worry too much about it as this whole dedicated tummy time thing wasn’t really pushed so heavily years ago and you don’t see lots of floppy headed adults around

Comparison is the thief of joy as they say! Try not to worry so much, milestones are just guidelines and every baby will reach it differently. My almost 7 month old has shown no interest in rolling until yesterday, whereas in my baby club all the babies were rolling weeks, even months ago.

Lay her on your chest or wear her in a sling, they count as tummy time. But don't stress about it, she's tiny, a few seconds of it a day will build up over time. She's still so young,fun means nothing to her really, a fun thing won't encourage her to do it at this stage. If you're going to compare her to other babies constantly you're in for a difficult time of it.

My first one hated every second of tummy time. I let him scream for about 30 seconds at a time while I was jumping about and singing to distract him. He's 3 1/2 and fab physically now. If the boppy works do that even 5 x 20 seconds at a time daily. And as another poster said, try on your chest.

Some like if and some don't, it's likely no deeper issue than that

*it

Don't do it if she doesn't like it. Ds hated it so we stopped. He's 6yo now and doesn't seem to have suffered for not doing it.

Dd hated it and never wanted to be on her tummy. No particular reason to it they are just all different.

Don't do it if she doesn't like it.

Honestly, when I had my three (all grown up now) there was no such thing as this "tummy time" that I seem to read about occasionally on here. I certainly never did it and mine were fine - met all milestones etc.

I just laid mine down on their backs on a play mat, often with the baby gym over them. They gradually learned to roll from there. They would panic the first few times they actually managed to roll into their tummies because they couldn't immediately work out how to roll back over again, but that phase was very short.

We never did specific 'tummy time' with DD, but she lived in a sling for large parts of the day for the first 6 months, so that gave her the necessary core strength in her neck. Any period of time spent either laying upright on your chest and/or a sling counts, and will likely be more tolerated than simply lying them flat on their belly. That's all it's about - giving them the chance to build neck strength, and as with all things, they'll all get their in the end, so don't compare with others (that way lies madness!)