Stop ... Tummy Time

This week Mark and I carted Peter back to his birthplace for his first appointment at the Sunnybrook Neonatal Follow-up Clinic. It was a very exciting and emotionally-charged day, as we had not been back to our old stomping ground since Peter was still a long way from coming home. More importantly, it was our first meeting with Peter's initial follow-up team, which consists of a developmental paediatrician, a nurse practitioner, and a physical therapist. They will be monitoring Peter until he reaches school age so that, if he struggles with developmental challenges (common amongst extremely premature infants), they can intervene on a timely basis. Later on, there will be other health professionals involved to track things like speech-language development, but for now the focus is on growth and movement as well as very basic social development. So far, so good: Peter's weight, length and head circumference are within normal range for his corrected age (i.e., the age that he would be if he had been born on his due date instead of three months earlier), and, although he shows some abdominal weakness (typical for a premature infant), his variety of movement and ability to make eye contact are also appropriate. Both the appointment and the literature that they sent home with us were fabulous because they provided explanations for certain of the specific issues that Peter deals with (parents of premature babies, take note: grunting is typical and is caused by straining to poop because the abdominal muscles are weak - the solution is tummy time - see below) and also gave us concrete things that we can do to help him along. What was less fabulous was the fact that said literature, which in many instances refers to things you should start doing as soon as your baby is discharged from the hospital, was not provided to us until 6 weeks after Peter's homecoming. Naturally, we have been feeling guilty about all the things we could and should have been doing up until now, including much more tummy time. We've been making up for lost time: below, a video of a particularly successful tummy time session.

Tummy time does not usually go this well: about 80% of the time, Master Peter despises the prone position (unless he has his pacifier in his mouth, in which case he promptly dozes off, which sort of defeats the purpose). However, since we've been told that doing 6-8 daily sessions of tummy time is critical to developing abdominal strength and gross motor skills, we persist. You can thank us later, son.