This video just makes me cry. The struggle, the triumph… it’s just great. http://bit.ly/cNgUSw
I think you and I cry at this video for different reasons. It’s so sad that someone would intentionally place their child upside down like that. She seems so old to be struggling to roll over. Poor thing.
What a nice baby? At first i suffered a little for the baby seeing him trying so much but then it seems to me that was very happy and enjoy turning around.
It seems that this video has been taken by parts and not all of it at the same time but we can really learn all the effort that they have to put in in order to get to turn.
I know it all depends on the baby but normally at what age should this ‘turning’ be achived.?
It appears I fundamentally disagree with Magda Gerber on one very important point. Human babies, like all animal babies, are right side up tummy down.
2010BEBES: The average age is 3 months. However all the children I know who were right side up since birth rolled much younger than that. Zed was less than two weeks old when he did his first full rotation.
What do you mean by right side up. Is it that when babies they should lay facing up?
When my kids where babies they slept with tummy down. Isn’t it dangerous to be left facing up at night if they vomit or something? My sister’s grandchild is 3 month and her mother said the doctor recomend that the baby sleep facing up but over a cushion so she is not completely flat but a little in diagonal Is this the better way now?
Thanks in advance for your advice.
By “right side up” I mean facing down, on their tummy.
Most doctors recommend sleeping on their back because of studies linked to SIDS. However, these studies include data that makes them fundamentally flawed, specifically they included positional asphyxia in the SIDS data before the “Back to Sleep” campaign, and not after. Also, there are issues with toxins in child mattresses that didn’t exist decades ago. Mattress wrapping tests have shown zero SIDS deaths in the group (where statistically there should have been some).
When I was a baby the advice was to put babies to sleep on their tummies because of the risk of choking on spit up. Because of a number of reflexes in newborns this is very unlikely. Babies with GERD or tongue ties are at a greater risk. There are some doctors that recommend tummy sleeping for GERD babies, or having them sleep on an angle. That I’m aware of, non suggest pillows because pillows are a very real suffocation risk. To get an angle, my doctor suggested blocks under the legs at the head of the crib, as a last resort something placed under the mattress but never anything on top of it.
I thought learning, or ‘struggling’ to roll over was an important step in a baby’s physical development. And, as an aside, I personally believe that babies don’t mind a struggle – any natural struggle – they don’t feel sad for themselves. We put our own feelings on them. What do you mean ‘upside down’? I’m not being snarky, but why do you say a baby’s natural position is on its tummy? (It may be, I’ve just never heard that before).
Anyway, not my babies. As infants they were on their backs so they could take in the world around them, learned naturally (through ‘struggle’) to turn over, gained strength in their necks by ‘struggling’ to hold their heads up and look around, then ‘struggled’ to pull themselves along the floor and eventually crawl. I didn’t feel sad for them. I was elated by their triumphs.
What a great video! The look of accomplishment on her face is just priceless…
My daughter hated tummy-time so we never did it (much to the dismay of her doctor and many other well meaning relatives). It didn’t delay her development in any way… she learned to roll back and forth just fine and was power-crawling everywhere way before she was expected to.
Each baby is different. Whether they start out on their tummies or their backs, learning to roll over will be a “struggle” as will so many other things that they learn. I think of it’s a very important part of their development.
My daughter also hated tummy time so we didn’t do much. Everyone told me," They all hate it, but it’s necessary. I couldn’t listen to her scream, so we just put her on her back, She could view everything and was much happier. She sat up, scooted, and walked early. She was running by 10 months. 
I’m always a little wary of comparisons between our babies and the animal world. Especially when it comes to physical development, because it’s a false comparison. Four legged creatures first need to learn to stand up (and quickly!) – so, yes, they are naturally on their bellies. They don’t have much need for being on their backs, and in fact it’s very dangerous in the wild. If an animal is on its back, there is something very wrong. Not so with our babies.
I think things change and what was good for my kids is not for my grandchild. I will have to update myself. It is difficult to change the belief you sitck by all your life.
Thanks for the reply and update.
McDume, I wrote you out a lovely reply that the computer ate when windows randomly updated. I’m not going to bother with rewriting the reply to most of your post, however here is why tummy-down is right-side up.
Babies are born being able to crawl (belly down slither type crawl). It’s a well documented phenomenon. For most babies this ability is short lived because they are placed on their back pretty much all the time and they gain weight very rapidly. But if a child is always right side up they do not lose this ability, instead it is the foundation from which all other locomotion is built.
In the first months of life children have a C-shaped curve to their spine. While laying on their stomachs, their legs curl up under their hips, and the C-curve of the spine is maintained. While laying on their back, the spine is strained due to the weight of the baby’s head and legs. Children are not happy laying on their backs in the first few day/weeks/months (depending on the child of course) until the natural C-curve relaxes.
The human ribcage, like that of all animals, protects the internal organs better from the back than from the front. We could compare babies to colts or calves if we wanted, but it wouldn’t add anything to the discussion. A far more apt comparison would be to primates, specifically chimpanzees and gorillas. (There are no primates that stand at birth, by the way.) Both chimps and gorillas always set their babies down on their stomachs, presumably because it’s safer, or any of the other reasons listed here.
There are also social implications of which way a child is laying. A right-side up baby can engage the world by lifting their head, and disengage by lowering it. An upside down baby doesn’t need to do anything to engage with the world, but has no way to disengage. The upside down baby is defenceless against overstimulation.
Concerns about heat-loss and digestion have prompted my local hospitals to have a tummy-down only NICU. Babies on their backs lose much more body heat than those on their stomachs. While bad for any newborn, it can be deadly for a premie.
As for digestion, the sphincter connecting the stomach to the oesophagus is not fully developed in newborns. Stomach contents can, and do, enter the oesophagus causing discomfort and damage. Laying on their back puts considerably more pressure on this sphincter, increasing the discomfort of, and damage to, the baby. In addition laying on their stomach promotes a leg position that aids movement in the intestines, reducing gas and helping things along.
The last reason, I think, is the best. Lay down and look around. When you’re on your stomach everything you can see is right-side up. But on your back most of what you see is upside down. It’s a simple bull-free test 
Very well said! This is stuff I wish I knew when my son was younger.
Okay, I think.
But “Babies are born being able to crawl”? Well documented?.. Not my babies. They weren’t ready to crawl for several months. I’ve never seen a newborn crawl. Ever. I even Googled ‘newborns crawling’… nothing.
And ‘social implications of which way a child is laying. A right-side up baby can engage the world by lifting their head, and disengage by lowering it.’ Just my experience, but my infants didn’t have the muscle strength to lift their head for several weeks. Face down on their bellies. Period. They had no choice whatsoever. But they could turn their heads, so on their backs there was some choice.
Anyway, let’s not go at it here. I’m assuming you have lots and lots of hands-on experience with infants/toddlers and have observed what you’re talking about – not just book learning/academia – so I absolutely respect and appreciate your POV. Mine is just different.
Vive la difference! In the meantime, a friend writes: " … When one understands how movement develops in a young infant one can understand that imposed tummy time is not necessary and can be harmful. A young baby has not yet developed the support they need through their back to hold up the weight of their head. You can look and see that very little babies placed on their belly strain their neck muscles to hold up their head.
This back support develops throughout the first months of life as a baby lies on their back, turning their head, lifting their head and legs from the floor, reaching for toys etc. In this way a baby develops the flexors, the muscles at the front of themselves, and then begins to learn to roll over. Once they roll over all this work on their flexors through the first months of life has lengthened the extensors, the muscles through the back, so that they are now ready to work.
The impetus to roll over comes from a very natural desire to engage with the world, to reach for toys, to move towards objects of desire. When a baby is given time to naturally learn to roll over onto their belly, without adult interference then they are ready to support the weight of their head lying on their belly and they will give themselves all the tummy time they need.
So many parents talk about how much their babies hate tummy time. When a baby is given time to find their own way there and is able to roll out of it themselves they don’t protest lying on their bellies.
Many adults have neck problems and when I work with them I can see that they never really developed the proper organization of the musculature through their back for supporting their heads with good posture.
As a society we have very little faith in our children’s natural abilities to grow, develop and move according to their own needs and nature’s plan.
I’m in complete agreement with Magda Gerber that when we put a baby into a position that they can’t get out of themselves we give them the message that what they can do is not good enough and that what they can’t do is expected of them.
Of course a baby can’t get into and out of lying on their back without an adult putting them their either, but in this position there is nothing required of their yet undeveloped anti-gravity musculature to maintain themselves - no impediment to the movement of their heads, no restriction to their breathing or the movements of their hands and legs. They can lie there as quietly or as actively as they choose."
Thanks Waterdreamer!
McDume, I was about to admonish you for your google skills when I realized I didn’t mention that the well documented newborn crawling phenomenon is frequently called the breast crawl. That is the evolutionary reason for the reflex. Babies can crawl to the breast and have their first meal exutero. If you re-search “newborns crawling” the first video result (I used google, it’s between the second and third non-sponsored results) “English - Initiation of Breastfeeding by …” shows a brand new baby crawling about 4 inches to latch her/himself (it might say, or even show, but I wasn’t playing that close of attention) on to the breast. The third and fourth results also document this.
Alternately you could just search youtube (or your prefered video site) for “breast crawl” there are many to choose from. Now you can watch a newborn crawl. It’s quite beautiful: The struggle, the triumph… it’s just great.
As for an inability to hold their head up AT ALL at birth that is insanely rare and I’m sorry to hear that all your children have suffered from it. Have you looked into possible genetic causes? Other children start by just being able to hold their head up for seconds, but the skill improves exponentially over the following weeks.
[Example: Zed was born stronger than average (he bruised my ribs kicking me once), he could hold his head up for 45 seconds, which seemed to line up perfectly with how much of the world he wanted to see at once. By a week he could hold his head up for 10 minutes without setting it down. But I suspect that was just because he’s also always needed more sleep than average. He easily slept 20 hours until he was more than a month old. He gets about 16 now (the average for this age is 14).]
[Example 2: Fox could hold his head up for about 20 seconds at birth. He’s just shy of 3 months old now and is crawling effortlessly and is rocking back and forth on his hands and knees preparing for creeping. He’s a monster; 99th percentile all around, so it’s not a small head he’s lifting.]
Of course I have hands on experience. Every mother does because we tend to group ourselves (into mother’s groups no less!) with people with similar philosophies. We watch each other’s children grow and develop, offering advice when needed, sharing our experiences. In the last 3 months, in my breastfeeding group alone, there have been 17 babies born and all but one crawled to the breast. The one that did not was very premature and hospital procedure got in the way of the best interest of the child. While I only witnessed one of these births first hand, I’ve seen the videos of 7 others, and detailed stories about all of them.
An important note though, not all of these women believe that skill is permanent. Those who follow the right side up idea have babies that still belly crawl (plus Fox, who’s nearly creeping) but those that don’t have immobile, or maybe rolling, babies. The women whose babies do not move think that the other babies are special and different, not that newborn crawling can develop into actual crawling, creeping, walking.
It’s not my job to lecture them, nor you, about how things could have been better for their babies. As long as no one is abusing their kids, they will develop fine. All healthy five year olds can crawl, walk, roll. And in that vane it does not matter which path one takes to get there.
Fantastic site! Thank you for that. And yes, that has been my experience – all three of my babies literally ‘found’ my breast (with a little prompting).
But they did not crawl there. They squirmed (and STRUGGLED). I love the expression – ‘breast crawling’ – but that is absolutely changing the dialogue. That is not the kind of crawling anyone would point to when describing an infant ‘struggling’ to crawl.
Again, wonderful site. And so worthwhile.
I’m confused.
LOL
Hi,
I have seen videos of 10 days babies crawling !
I can google them if you want…
They can do anything if given an opportunity !
– Kreena !