Tummy Time!
“My baby cries every time I put him on his belly. He can’t stand it! He’s just so much happier on his back or sitting in his infant seat. Is tummy time really that important? ”
You’ve probably heard that tummy time is important and to understand why, let’s look at the role gravity plays in early development. Begin by trying something: Lie down on the floor on your back and notice how easy it is to pay attention to the world around you without having to exert any effort at all. Now, roll over onto your belly and see if you feel a change. In order to interact, you have to lift your head up and use your neck and back muscles just to see what’s going on around you. Similarly, in the first few months of life, babies are working hard to deal with the force of gravity. It can be overwhelming at times and lying on their bellies can be a pretty big chore.
So, why is tummy time so important?
Usually we don’t pay much attention to gravity, but in your infant’s development, it’s a big player! All of your baby’s movement develops in response to its force, beginning with reflexes that are triggered by gravity. These reflexes activate his muscles, getting them ready to move his body away from its downward pull. This readiness is called “muscle tone” and your baby’s strength and coordination slowly develop from this base of background muscle activity.
Tummy time in the first few months of life gives your infant the foundation for developing “balanced muscle tone” – underlying muscle action that leads to comfortable and balanced posture and movement. You can feel this “tone” while holding your baby. Pay attention to how his weight falls into your arms. Is he yielding into you or pulling away? Does his body feel a bit floppy or rigid? sagging or perking up? Can you notice him moving from relaxed to more active? What you are feeling is your baby’s muscle tone: shifts in muscle tension as he relates to gravity in any given moment.
It’s common for infants to spend more time relating to gravity on their backs than their tummies. This is in part due to sleeping on their backs and reclining in infant seats and carriers (a position that has similar muscle activation to being on their backs). Unless they spend corresponding time on their bellies, they are likely to develop higher tone in the muscles on the back of the body. This is where tummy time comes in: it balances this out by increasing the tone of the muscles on the front of the body, and the two working together help your baby progress through all of the normal patterns of motor development with more ease and efficiency.
Introducing your infant to the pull of gravity from his tummy is often easier said than done. I’ll post again soon to give you ideas for how you and your baby can have fun with it. In the meantime, create some good floor space and keep noticing muscle tone – both yours and your little one’s!
Try It Yourself!
The Tonic Labyrinthine Reflex
Let me introduce you to gravity again. You guessed it: back down onto the floor on your belly. As you settle into its support, focus your attention on the muscles at the front of your body. Can you feel a sense of weight loading the front surface? Now roll onto your back and repeat. You are experiencing a reflex called the Tonic Labyrinthine. This reflex increases the tone of the muscles on the front of the body (flexor tone) when you are on your belly and the tone on the back when you are on your back (extensor tone). It’s triggered by the pull of gravity.
Explore the different ways that your body can relate to gravity in these two positions.
· Imagine being drawn passively down into it, almost as if you have no energy or power to meet its pull. Here you’re collapsing into gravity.
· Now increase the tone of the muscles on the undersurface of your body, so much so that you actually pull up and away from the floor. Here you’re resisting gravity.
· Finally, try to meet its force in an active exchange – where you feel like you can move both towards and away from it in a comfortable relationship. Here you’re bonding with gravity.
By “bonding” with the force of gravity, you move in relation to it rather than “in spite of it.” The ease of movement you experience is the result of balanced muscle tone. Exploring this reflex can help you develop a keener sense of how you are holding tension in your own body as well as how to release it….. and how to sense it in your baby’s body. With this awareness you can help guide your child’s path to softening and yielding as well as to learning to relate to gravity in a way that doesn’t feel over-powering. Your embodiment will directly influence your baby’s experience.