BABY MOVES #2

Tummy Time rules the baby routine for the first 8 months! The majority of this is done on the floor, but there are many other ways to engage and promote movement variety, while also adding in some excitement for the senses. Move daily, as baby is up for it.

Here are some new things for the movement toolbox.

NOTE: Most guidelines are built for “birth at 40 weeks”. If your baby came early – it is often recommended to “correct” or “adjust for due date”, specifically in movement. *Learn more about corrected age HERE.

Try This

Tummy Time Progression

Tummy time is an easy way of saying “developing the muscles of the back, neck, shoulders by pushing, reaching, and grabbing while the tummy is supporting some or most of the weight of the baby”. To build those muscles, it takes daily practice. Experts recommend that working up to 40 – 60 minutes a day of “tummy time” by 3 months is a great goal, with 30min as a minimum. This can be broken into small sessions – some with direct interaction, some letting them do it on their own (under supervision). To help make it more fun – try putting the baby down on the floor and surround them, out of arm reach, with high contrast images, pictures of family, books propped up, or a mirror. These give eye level things to look at.

A few modifications to tummy time include changing the angle of the baby. A wedge (pillow, rolled towel) under their chest, laying them over your leg, or lap. You can also think of any time the baby is not laying on their back, it’s a form of tummy time. This means when you are burping them, or carrying them tummy down in a “football hold”.

For more tummy time ideas -> [YouTube, 7min 44sec]

Turning Heads

Get that head moving around. As neck and shoulder muscles build, so does the ability to turn the head from side to side, up and down. During tummy time, vertical support, on their back or side – get kiddo’s attention by showing a toy or noise maker held in various positions in front of, to the side and above them. This encourages them to rotate their head side to side and front to back and along angles.

Two main ways to approach it directly – tracking or target acquisition. With tracking – get attention with object/sound, move object around slowly so baby can work on tracking. With target acquisition – move the object to a place opposite to where baby is looking and try to draw attention for them to find it. This can also be done with baby in supported sitting (you holding them), if they are ready for that.

Specifically for tummy time on ground – moving the object to the side helps stimulate baby’s weight shift to that side – a form of early balance learning. Bringing the toy higher helps the neck, but also encourages baby to push up on their forearms to raise their chest to help visually track a high up toy. This also helps to lengthen the spine and build curvature into it. Baby spines start as a “C”. Pushing, pulling, and reaching help to re-shape the spine into the “S” shape as they grow in the first year.

When letting them play on their own, watch if they are tilting their head both directions vs favoring one side, which may be a possible sign of positional torticollis (see WHY for more). To help with moving the head back and forth, switch up the head/toe direction when sleeping, on the changing table, or during feeding. This is a simple way to naturally help build neck muscles by turning a different direction to see you. Said simply: look for ways to balance out the orientation of the baby throughout the day.

Unwind Progression

Continue the unwind by putting baby on their back – assist them through body exploration by bringing their hands to touch various parts of the body. Bring the hands and feet together along the midline, kind of like hand/foot clapping. Repeat one hand/foot at a time.

Unwinding can also be done with touch (tactile sensation). To help the fingers and toes unwind – gently stroke the palms and bottom of the foot and watch the reaction of fingers and toes. For the hands this helps teach the open close and grasp reflex.

Additionally – try gently stroking the thighs and lower belly area to stimulate reflex of knees coming closer to chest. Another fun one is gently stroking down the spine to stimulate shoulders moving backward.

Muscle Tone Progression

Continue to let the baby push and pull against you. This is easiest if baby is on their back. If more upright, in a baby carrier or burping, put a hand/forearm under their feet and let them push against your arm. If doing tummy time, let them push against your hand, or the floor if they are angled up.

As always – don’t progress any faster than your baby is ready for. Watch the changes as the months go on, build that mindset of daily variety of movement. Oh and bring it all together from time to time with the senses – the eyes and ears and feels – change up the scene, narrate what you are doing, switch up the play mat and textures of play. Explore variety while putting them through the motions.

The WHY focuses on two important, but different things: movement issues and fatherly habits.

First – potential movement related issues for babies in the first few months of life.

About 47% of babies today experience flathead or positional plagiocephaly. It is believed that the recommendation to sleep babies on their backs in response to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) may be the reason for the increase, however some early, and unpublished work by researchers in the movement community also points to movement issues such as torticollis, and lack of positional variety (including baby play devices that hold a baby in one position), as causes.

Torticollis is an issue that causes a baby to have difficulty in turning their neck, or they may have a tilted head more regularly. The neck muscles become shortened and tight, or contracted, which further complicates movement. Think of your hamstrings or hips after a day of sitting in front of the computer.

The root cause of torticollis is either present from birth (congenital) or acquired. Congenital would be from something such as the position or movement activity of the baby in the womb. Acquired is typically caused by a mild viral infection, or some sort of mild trauma. Talk to your pediatrician if you suspect any type of movement issue, including torticollis.

In the long run though it’s important to know that these issues exist. Most of this is perfectly correctable. But so much of our health as human beings centers around movement, which is a great gift for you to give your baby as early as possible. Keeping routines of being intune with the movement of your child not only helps with connection and development, but also in detecting issues early.

A Story from Steve:
I thought babies came out like new cars ready to roar. It never dawned on me that my daughter would have imbalances, or tight muscles. But when she turned four months old she was diagnosed as having mild torticollis – tight neck muscles that caused her head to twist to the right. This caused a mild flatness in her head which caused major parental guilt. Luckily a month of physical therapy cleared up the torticollis and set her free to move. I don’t think I would have known to look for these things if I had not learned about how to be engaged with how she moved.

The second WHY subject is on habits. A habit is a regular tendency or practice, often automatic, and sometimes hard to give up. Some are good, some are bad. With a change as large as having a kid, you may have noticed some of the things you used to do, you are not doing as much – and new things have filled those spaces. These changes can sometimes be frustrating, but that’s where the power of mindset comes in. Think about the new things in life and which things you’d like to make a habit – Family Days, Family Dinners, Reading a book day to your child, building daily movement habits, etc. This simple thought process of acknowledging the changes and making a point to explore them actually helps to rewire your brain to be open to forming new habits that you enjoy and look forward to. This is also the foundation of how you and your family can start to look at what’s important now and in the coming years.

In terms of forming habits. Many books and a lot of literature around behaviors have been brought into mainstream culture in the past decade. From TED Talks like Matt Cutts’ on building change for the better in 30 days, to Charles Duhigg’s the Power of Habits, to a plethora of apps that will guide you through 21 days to form a habit. If you have ever heard about habits in the mainstream – it would appear that there are some contradictions and confusions.

So what does science say about habits?

First, to address the confusion, much of the focus on 30 days to build a habit was derived from Maxwell Maltz’s work (check out this old video [YouTube, 10min] of Maltz talking about his philosophies). Maltz was a cosmetic surgeon who theorized in his 1960 book Psycho-Cybernetics that a person who has an accurate and generally positive outlook of themselves will be more successful. He observed from his plastic surgery practice that it took about 21 days for a patient to become accustomed and like their new appearance. This idea was latched on to by self help writers and pundits for the next fifty years resulting in the general belief that it takes about 30 days to form a habit.

However, in 2009 a monumental study on habit formation, from the the University College of London, showed that it took, on average, 66 days for a person to make a daily habit automatic. The range was anywhere from 18 days to 254 days depending on the person and the task!

Habit formation works best if you can set cues to help initiate simple actions. Putting a cup in the bathroom so any time your urine is yellow you can drink a glass of water right there. Having a timer set and whenever you hear it go off, you do one pushup (then 2, then 3, etc). Putting up a sheet of paper on the wall that says MOVEMENT VARIETY, and taking that as a cue for a Tummy Time session. There are many ways to do it, and it starts with awareness of the things you may like to change or build.

So why is this important? The thing to remember is that habits are not a decide and go proposition, they take real work and time – just like building a rich and engaging relationship with your child. The magic is in the small daily interactions and the accumulation of those little moments over time to build powerful habits of fatherhood.