A new start

I am humbled and challenged by some realizations lately about some of my choices in parenting so far. We all set out to be the best parents that we can be and then exhaustion mixes with learning your baby's personality and to top it all off you can throw in a bag of medical issues and a bag of "expert" books and you have one hot mess! :-) (I realize that was not a very cohesive sentence). Anyway, I have realized finally that a big part of Emily's inability to roll and bear weight on her arms has been my failure to give her adequate tummy time. The excuses started with her colic and the fact that tummy time always resulted in lots of screaming and lots of spit up. I was so afraid that she was losing all her milk each time she was on her belly. And yes, it was a ton of spit up! She still spits up quite a bit when she's on her belly no matter how long it has been since her last meal. We had so much crying associated with every other activity of life the first 4 months that I just really didn't want to listen to or cause the crying on purpose. My worries about her arm strength started at her 4 month appt. The doc said not to worry at all and that it would just happen. No questions about tummy time habits. No advice on how long to do it every day. Nothing. So I complied and just waited and worried until Christmas. Then I called again and asked. They said they wanted to wait til her 6 month appt in January to address it and that I'd probably (magically) see her rolling by then. The appt comes and goes and they are still not concerned. Now we are to the end of the month and I sense a growing weakness in her arms and an even more present fussiness when on her belly. I started to panic that we've missed the boat!

Thankfully I have a sweet friend here who is an OT. She doesn't specialize in infant therapy but she has a friend with experience in this area. So I have the advice and the knowledge now to move forward. I am so grateful. For starters, Emily needs 2-3 hours of tummy time a day. WOW! That might not seem like a lot, but when you factor in a total of 8 awake hours and divide that by nursing every 2-3 hours, solid food 2x/day, sitting practice, exersaucer and jumper time, language play (which can only happen when she's happy), back time to play with her feet, bath time, and carseat traveling to have new experiences throughout the week...there is not much free time now. I also learned that the last 4 weeks in utero are when babies really hone their "flexion" (I think?) which helps their muscles to work and tone after they are born. No one told me this earlier!!! And I think I've read almost every book there is out there by now. So we were behind the eight ball for muscle ability from the start and should have been focusing on tummy time even more.

This is mostly a venting post about my errors to not push it more and about my frustration that things didn't get turned around earlier. We have had "Operation Tummy Time" for 2 days now and I've noticed a few things. One is that changes are happening quickly! She is using her arms more and bearing more weight. She is spending some of that time with a soft donut ring under her chest to take some pressure off her tummy and lessen the spit up. This has resulted in her rolling over twice. So the more she does it, the more she'll get used it. She is also just now starting to rest her head to the side when she's on her belly instead of face planting the whole time. She even conked out for 5 minutes on her belly with her head to the side when she was exhausted this afternoon. But the sad part of this is that she has cried almost her entire awake time and only stops when I am holding her. The 10 minute bursts of tummy time are so upsetting to her that she can't sit or lay or doing anything with enjoyment after it. That is not going to work for very long! She needs playtime and she needs to have more to her day than just a muscle workout and a bunch of tears. Hopefully this is only a short phase and the stronger she gets, the more she might come to enjoy playing on her belly.

Please pray for her muscles to develop well, for creativity for me on how to make this fun and enjoyable in some way for her (I have music and light toys, mirrors and tons of manipulatives to change out but they don't seem to matter to her anymore), and for our sanity as we adjust to a new dynamic of our relationship (mommy makes me do things I don't like and my baby is crying right in front of me and I'm not rescuing her). I had to do this with sleep training and it paid off, but this seems harder in some respects because she's awake and I'm right there with her.