Tummy Time boot camp

When the babies were in the NICU, the PAs and doctors constantly reminded us that both babies would probably have some developmental delays; they figured Anderson would be completely caught up with his same-age peers by kindergarten; Amelia would probably not really catch up for quite some time, and possibly never (very sad, but we made our peace with that pretty quickly, especially when we took into consideration that we were told she wouldn't survive past the 26th week of the pregnancy! We will take what we can get! And you never really know--we aren't giving up hope there!).

All of those medical professionals didn't realize how competitive I am!! Fast-forward to now. Anderson is 3 months (adjusted) old, old enough to start hitting the ever-famous " developmental milestones". YES, I know every baby develops at his/her own pace, and YES, I know that he's a bit behind just because of his birth situation, but if you know me at all, you know how crazy competitive I am! Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, I can't say, but that's the way it is. SOOO...after taking a look at the lovely "milestones" chart, I saw that one of the first items on the list is "baby can push his/her chest off of the ground using his/her forearms"--the "baby push-up". Hmmmm. I started watching Anderson during Tummy Time, and he was not really pushing himself up--or doing too much of anything at all. Now, keep in mind that Anderson HATES Tummy Time. He tolerates it for, oh, maybe 3 minutes before squalling and writhing on the blanket until you pick him up. Unfortunately, because of the constant crying, I hadn't been forcing the issue as much as I probably should.

Hence, the institution of Tummy Time boot camp. Every diaper change, we were going to get down on the mat and have some serious Tummy Time training! I figured we could get down there and work on that head control at every diaper change--about every 3-4 hours, or as necessary. Which worked out well, at first. Our first session, he tolerated it about like normal--he put in a good 4 minutes of work lifting that head off of the mat. The next diaper change--about the same. However, the little guy is smart. I think he started being able to predict what was about to happen. At the next change, as soon as I picked him up off of the changing table and started to put him on his belly, he let out a huge, girly screech that stopped me dead in my tracks. It wasn't going to happen--not that time, nor the next. He'd figured out that he was in boot camp and he wanted no part of it. He was already AWOL. As quick as it started, it was over. I was disappointed, but ready to resign myself to "he'll do it in his own time"...blah, blah, blah. Whatever.

Fortunately for both of us, it was like a little miracle occurred. The next morning, I went ahead and put him down on the mat. Fortunately, he seemed to have forgotten the previous day's travesties...and the little man didn't disappoint! Here's what he FINALLY did for me:



Not perfect, but wow is that much better than the wiggling, squirming, writhing that we had been doing just a few days before! He's doing even better than that, now, without Mommy's crazy schedule of insane amounts of tummy time. Whether he's doing it "in his own time", or whether he just heard the desperation in my voice and decided to appease me, I'll never know. I'm just happy he's making progress. :)

He also decided to try to feed himself--not anything related to the dreaded "milestones", just some fun. Here are some progressive pics of his attempts:







It was very cute! Lifting the head = not fun; eating more = FUN!!