The Case Against Tummy Time: Guest Post by Irene Gutteridge

Does your baby like tummy time? Most don’t, for good reason. Until infants are able to roll into the tummy position on their own, most of them find it uncomfortable, immobilizing, and no doubt highly discouraging. 

But rather than listen to our babies, we are asked to put our faith in recent studies about plagiocephaly (flat-headedness), studies that don’t take into account the fact that infants are now spending more time than ever in restrictive devices (like car seats, bouncy seats and carriers) that inhibit babies from doing what they are naturally inclined to do: round out the back of their heads by turning them from side to side. 

Instead, the back position and rousingly successful “Back to Sleep” campaign (which has cut the SIDS rate in the US in half since it began in 1992) have been named as the culprits.  So, rather than understand these studies as a reflection of the need for more free movement and floor time during the baby’s waking hours, many experts have concluded that imposing tummy time is the answer.

In this insightful guest post, Irene Gutteridge, a Feldenkrais and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (and producer/director of the world renowned “Baby Liv” video), sheds light on the valuable developmental processes hindered when tummy time is imposed early, and helps us see tummy time from our baby’s point of view. Irene writes: 

Have you ever had a local anesthetic for dental surgery?

Your gums, facial muscles, facial affect, smiling, talking, eating – it all just goes funny and you simply can’t use your mouth area until the anesthesia wears off. You feel kind of silly and imbecile-like, yes?

Now imagine this.

You are on your stomach, lying on the ground. You want to lift your head up.  But someone just injected your back extensor muscles (the ones that allow you to lift up off the ground and lift your head) with that same local anesthetic that dentists use. The very muscles that work to lift up your head and chest are simply deadened. It’s even hard to engage your shoulders and arms to lift yourself up because, unfortunately, they too interact with your back extensors. You might say: “Darn it, this head feels so heavy. It’s a struggle. I feel completely helpless!”

This last scenario is exactly what happens when infants are put on their stomachs for “tummy time.” The only difference is that the infant can’t speak yet to say: “Hey, what’s going on, this sucks. I’m uncomfortable. HELP!”

Putting infants on their tummies without having them go through the process of getting to their tummy on their own is analogous to injecting their back extensor muscles with that local anesthetic. They are paralyzed and basically unable to access their back extensor muscles, mainly because the actual act of getting to their tummy from their back (something that takes months!) is what forms their spinal curves – the lumbar, thoracic and cervical – and in turn gives them strength in their back muscles.

Have you had a chance to watch “Baby Liv”?

Before you read on, give yourself the 3-minute pleasure of watching Baby Liv. Watch the video piece straight through.  See the process of Baby Liv going from her back, to side, to tummy (and all the in-between’s).

Then, I’d like to give you a recap of what she’s doing from a functional and structural point of view. In essence: What is giving her the juice to get to her tummy and decide when she is ready for her own “Tummy Time”.

This footage was taken over a series of months.

@ 20 seconds: She’s pretty still, but if you look at the eye movement, to the right and left, that is priming her spine for rotating. For now, she’s doing tiny pieces of rotation. (Try this yourself, only move your eyes left and right. If you are attentive enough, you’ll sense you neck and head wanting to move in the direction your eyes travel.)

She then looks at her fingertips. This gaze upwards is forming the curves in the upper part of her spine (the cervical area) – and in actuality, it is transmitting throughout her entire body. The support she finds from the ground under her – from foot to head – provides “juice” for this movement (and all movements, really).

@ 41 seconds: You can just see the increase in fluidity throughout her entire self and a greater availability for movement.

@ 1 min: She’s moving her legs a lot, and this is putting a nice wave up her spine…think…snake like movement!

@1.15: She starts to do a roll. This seemingly innocent movement carries a lot of punch in the development world. That little push through her foot and the tiny rotation it brings is just the beginning of finding a teensy bit of spinal extension and use of her back muscles. Lifting both of her legs up tilts her pelvis and flattens her lower back into the ground. This flattening of her lower back is forming the opposite of her lumbar curve. It is lengthening her back muscles. This lengthening gives her ‘energy’ in her back muscles so that she has more ability to actually engage them.

@2.09: If you can catch it – it’s quick – when she is going for giraffe Sophie, you see her little head pick up off the ground. BINGO! This little lift is happening because the rest of her body, below, has found the support surfaces and functionally to un-weight her head.  All the pieces are falling into place.

@ 2.18: She’s a pretty happy kid.  She’s got there HERSELF (think: self-reliance), and her head held high with absolute support coming from her pelvis, hands and legs. She’s anchoring into the ground in numerous places and learning how to use her environment for movement. You see, in this moment of her lifting her body up, there is no impingement on her neck area, and clean spinal curves are being developed.

It isn’t about the firing and strengthening of “muscles” per se, it’s about functionally doing the movements that our nervous system wants to find, and then letting the muscles, and nature, just do their job.

@2.44-2.46: Now she is really showing off her ability to finely control her rotation and movement. She’s got it dialed. It feels good. She’s having fun!

Irene Gutteridge blogs at her virtual office, The Human Groove: Curate You, about “all things – functional & biological, with a special twist around the brain, body and nervous system. Her education is in the health sciences and she is a certified Feldenkrais and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner practicing in Whistler & Vancouver, British Columbia. You can reach her through her website, thehumangroove.com, via twitter @thehumangroove, or good old email: irene@thehumangroove.com. She loves meeting new people!

For more on the tummy time issue, please read No Tummy Time Necessary, a terrific article by Early Childhood Educator and RIE Associate Lisa Sunbury.

Photo by devinf on Flickr.

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123 Responses to “The Case Against Tummy Time: Guest Post by Irene Gutteridge”

1. Barbara says:

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   I never saw the point of “tummy time” on the floor for my babies in the early months. They seemed to get plenty enough of it when lying chest to chest on their dad or I. Later, when they could roll by themselves, they got it of their own volition. The whole idea of “tummy time” seems very contrived to me. What’s the need if you spend plenty of time holding and lying with your baby?

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   • Becca says:

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     I agree our daughter uses her muscles a lot when she is on our chest. She has been rolling onto her side now on the floor so its a matter of time before she can roll all the way over. She is held a lot but is very very strong and holds her head up very well. I think babies’ bodies know when they need to reach their milestones.

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2. KC says:

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   Just wondering what your thoughts are of propped up tummy time ? I was encouraged to prop my baby up with her arms over the top of a small towel roll. From memory I think she had just started making the effort to roll but wasn’t actually doing it at that point.

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   • janet says:

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     KC – thank you for asking… I think it’s totally unnecessary to prop or position babies. When we do this we “freeze” them in a position that we think they should be in, rather than trusting and allowing them to choose the positions they are ready for.

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3. Dawn Pedersen says:

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   Thank you! I always felt a little weird about it but EVERYONE was saying how important tummy time was. Good thing I was kind of a slacker about it.

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4. Amy Appel says:

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   I’m expecting my first baby in a few months and I totally agree with the RIE philosophy on just about everything, including tummy time. However, I just googled “positional plagiocephaly” and found a bunch of mainstream articles that basically said my baby will have a flat head if allowed to be on his/her back for extended periods of time. What is your experience with this? Do you know any RIE babies who got positional plagiocephaly? Is this just fear and hype? Maybe I shouldn’t have looked it up b/c it sounds scary!

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   • Hannah says:

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     As far as I am aware from my own readying and research no babies at the PIKLER institute(Have a google) ever got a flat head and were never ever placed into any position they couldn’t get into/out of themselves.

     Babies on there backs naturally move their head from side to side when listening and looking at things, this is only prevented if they are frequently ‘contained’ in bouncers, carseats etc.

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5. Julie says:

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   I understand it in theory but it doesn’t quite explain the fact that my first son preferred being on his tummy from birth. It was years before the Back to Sleep campaign so I let him sleep on his tummy all the time.

   I agree that SOME babies probably feel very uncomfortable but to say that ALL babies feel this way is just ignorant.

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   • janet says:

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     Julie, it seems you’ve misread the article, which states that most, but not all young infants are uncomfortable in the tummy position because they are immobilized. This immobility is the reason some babies sleep more soundly on their tummies and also why it is associated with SIDS.

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6. Mich says:

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   “the actual act of getting to their tummy from their back (something that takes months!) is what forms their spinal curves – the lumbar, thoracic and cervical – and in turn gives them strength in their back muscles.”

   Ok no, that’s not how the curves are formed. First of all, when you are born your back is concave (aka, you already have your thoracic, and sacral curves.) when the baby first starts lifting its head, that’s when the cervical curve forms and when the baby starts standing upright is when the lumbar curve forms.

   While I can understand not wanting to make your baby uncomfortable, they are not paralyzed. The whole purpose is to strength the muscles and get neural coordination to start movement control. Hence, by making them try to use their muscles, they should be able to control their movements faster. And it would not be necessary to leave the baby on their stomach for long periods of time to do this.
   so I’m sorry, I don’t really understand what you are trying to get at here because so far most of what you say just sounds ridiculous to me. Most scientists don’t tell you to do it to prevent a flat head, they say it to help develop muscle and coordination.
   Will a child’s motor skills be fine if they don’t do tummy time? For sure. But don’t go saying that its a bad thing to try and help the development of it. I feel like a bigger concern should be when to submerge your baby underwater when swimming. In that situation, I feel a baby truly is helpless. But a couple minutes on it’s stomach won’t hurt it.

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   • orna says:

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     “Hence, by making them try to use their muscles, they should be able to control their movements faster.”

     I think you found the RIE point right here: Though I’m not at all an RIE expert, I think that “making” babies do things rather than trusting them to move at the right for them pace is what’s being questioned. Babies will learn to lift their heads without anyone coaxing it out of them; why rush and deny them the freedom to explore movement at their own pace? It seems to me that childhood is a process and we’re trying to skip it for immediate “results”. People spend fortunes learning how to “be in the moment” yet we encourage babies to hurry up the process of becoming. We are born with a thirst for knowledge, we needn’t be “made” to learn (and frequently the making kills the process of learning).

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7. Christa the BabbyMama says:

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   I mostly agree… except that plagiocephaly is the real deal in preemies, who tend to roll on their own anyway. With our preemie daughter, we did do enforced tummy time (sometimes right on us or on a roll) under the guidance of a PT because she was getting a flat spot and her back muscles had actually started to tighten (as can happen with preemies). So in cases where there’s a medical necessity, enforced tummy time has its place.

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