tummy time

Every parenting book and baby-raising website talks about the importance of tummy time. There's lots about how spending time on her belly every day will keep baby's head from being flat, will strengthen her neck muscles, will help her to roll over and crawl earlier. You're pretty much a monster if you don't establish a strict tummy time regimen during baby's first few days in the world.

They do not, generally, warn you that your baby might hate tummy time.

Anytime we put M down on her belly, she'd squirm, flounder around for a minute or two, and then start howling and mashing her face into the floor. It was loud. And kind of painful to watch. As a result, there was very little tummy time at our house.

So I'd pretty much resigned myself to having a deformed, slow-to-crawl child who would have lots of things to hate me for in her teenage years.  Fortunately, a friend suggested something much simpler: Propping M up on a firm pillow.

Bingo.

Granted, it's still not her favorite thing to do, but with enough distractions, tummy time sometimes stretches to five or ten minutes.

For those of you worrying about Miss M suffocating her sweet self, I assure you that all tummy time is closely supervised. Which usually means that I, too, am spending lots of time lying on the floor. I'm kind of hoping there are developmental benefits for mamas, too...