Episode 23- Rolling Back to Belly

Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.

Welcome to the kids sleep show, where we help tired parents from around the world to get their children to fall asleep independently, sleep through the night and build healthy sleep habits for life. I’m your host, Courtney Zentz. Now let’s sleep together.
Hello, and
welcome to this week’s episode, I am excited to chat with you today about a common problem that many new parents face within the first few months of your little one’s life. And that is your baby all of a sudden rolls in the middle of the night. And what are you supposed to do. So the little ones developmental leaps that they’re going to make throughout the whole first year, can in some cases, cause the progressions, which probably is the most frequently googled term that I see in new parents today. Because it seems like everything causes a sleep regression. Well,
the good news is,
I’m going to tell you today, exactly how you help your little one practice to ensure that if they do roll from their back to their belly in the middle of the night, and you find them on their belly, and they’re pissed off and upset that they got there, and they can’t get back how we can help them to learn pretty quickly with just a few minutes a day, how to roll back on their own to their back. So the first thing we’re gonna do is we’re going to position our little one on the floor, and they’re going to be on their back. And you know, maybe they’re on a play mat or something of that nature, a nice soft blanket on the floor, obviously, somewhere in a safe space. And this would be an exercise that you would do once your baby starts rolling on their own, to their belly. So somewhere around six, seven months of age, they roll to their belly, and they’re stuck. And now you’re trying to figure out what you’re supposed to do. Okay, so when your little one gets laid down on their back, and they roll over, the first thing you want them to do is encourage them to get up into the position where they are practicing that tummy time. So they’re up on their two arms, kind of what I would call up dog, for those of you that do yoga, I’m a huge advocate of yoga. So they’re kind of in that upper dog position, they’re practicing their neck strength, they’re looking around the room, they’re sort of enjoying the sights that they’re taking in at least for a few minutes. My kids always hated tummy time. So after a few minutes, they would get moderately agitated and start crying. But once your little one gets there, and their arms and hands are down and their neck is up, and they’re kind of looking around the room, I encourage you to grab a toy. So it gets something small, that’s a little eye catching. And what you want to do is you want to position it so that the toy is just out of reach. And you’re going to practice this on both sides. Because from a developmental standpoint, we want to make sure that there’s balance
in
what they’re doing as far as which side, they’re sort of shifting their weight to. So that again, we have a very symmetrical kind of practice going from one side to the next, to make sure that they’re able to roll on both sides. Okay, so what you’re going to do is you’re going to take a toy, and you’re going to put that toy sort of within eyesight, so they’re following it right. So you want it to be something that catches their interest. And you’re basically going to move that toy almost like around their head. And what you’re going to start to notice is the position that they take, which is the twisted part of their body, right, they’re going to be turning their neck, turning their shoulders, turning their head to look for the toy. And in doing so you’re going to help showing them how to roll back on to their back, right. So you do this for about 10 minutes, three times a day. And you’re going to practice again on both sides. So the first time you’re going to take it all the way up and help them to roll on to their back going one direction. And then once they’re back on their back, they’re probably going to flip back over onto their belly. And you’re going to practice going on the other side, right, so that their eyesight is following that toy, again, their neck follows where their eye goes in from an alignment standpoint, you will see they will comfortably then roll back onto their back. So that’s the best way to practice. When your little one gets stuck, how you want to solve for that particular challenge, right? Some children are going to find comfort at some point on their belly. But they have to be able to get there on their own. And you always want to check with the latest recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics or with your pediatrician to make sure that that particular time and based on their age and developmentally when they get to their belly if they do prefer to be a belly sleeper that they are able to be there so again those conversations are best had with your doctor, but this is a great way to practice if you have a little one that is just flat out not happy that they are on their belly and they need help getting back. This is also going to be something that’s important if your little one is wearing a sleep suit. So a lot of the clients that I work with will use different swaddles and swaddled transition products throughout that whole first year life, right
kind of,
they start with a blanket when they come home from the hospital. After two or three days, they realize that what worked at the hospital no longer works at home. And many of you move through this progression of different types of swaddles. So whether they’re swaddling with their arms up their swaddling, with their arms at their side, their swaddling with their arms out, as they progress through the age, I typically like to get rid of swaddles around eight weeks, just from a preference standpoint, I find one baby starts to explore a bit more. So they want their hands free to, they can actually start rolling pretty early on if they figure out how to do it. And so you always want to make sure that there’s not a swaddle once your baby knows how to roll, because they need to have access to their arms, because they’re still building neck strength to be able to lift themselves up, so that if they should get onto their belly, they have the ability and the strength to let you know, into that monitor, if it’s the middle of the night that they are now in an uncomfortable position. Okay. So when you start to get to these transition products, you get to things like the magic Merlin sleepsuits, one of my favorite products, but once baby rolls in it, they got to move on. Right. So with that, you need to move to something like a wearable blanket, a comfortable sleepsack. The Halo sleepsack I always liked it’s nice and big. Kids can wear those for you know, honestly, I think I kept mine in till they were like three years old. Because the benefit of the wearable blanket version is they can’t climb anything, right. So if it just sort of becomes a part of their repertoire, and they go to try to climb that crib the first time. If you have foot pajamas that have the grip on the bottom. That grip makes it super easy for your little Tarzan to climb out of the crib, and Houdini themselves onto the carpet. With something like a wearable blanket, they actually can’t do that because they slide right back down. So that is another trick for keeping your little ones in that crib for as long as possible. So I’m just full of useless tricks today for a little babies that’s going to help keep them in that crib, where it is safe. And certainly at the place that I love where children sleep, my daughter is four and a half. And I just literally like two weeks ago took her out of the crib. more so because we were starting to go to like different friend’s houses. And she needed to learn to sleep in a bed. But she wanted like nothing to do with getting out of the crib. So I did definitely kind of forced that one. But she’s four and a half. So age appropriate wise, you know, we didn’t need to get her there. But she just liked the comfort of the crib. She’s been doing great actually in the big girl bed now. She hasn’t gotten out or anything like that, which is good. You know, depending on when they move though. And depending on the age in which they go they you know, that can lead to other issues, which we can certainly talk about in another episode. But yes, so just to bring it back. Best thing you can do with this milestone where they’re rolling from back to belly and they get stuck is practice five minutes a day, 10 minutes a day, by the end of the week. If you think about it right and you’re practicing 30 minutes a day. That’s basically over three hours of practice. every single week, they’re going to get it pretty quick. If you’re consistent with doing if you’re pretty consistent with doing the practice of the exercises. Sorry, a little bit of a brain fart pair. But yeah, so that’s going to be what is the most helpful for you as far as practicing from the belly to back. If you have any other questions or there’s anything specific you want to chat about. Be sure to reach out send me a direct message you can email me Courtney at tiny transitions.com This is a little bit of a shorter episode, but I wanted to keep it brief, give you a nice factual thing you could walk away with today, and I look forward to having you join me in upcoming episodes. definitely let me know what you want to hear more about. I love answering your questions and being here as a source for you on your little one’s journey to sleep. Always as a reminder, be sure to join me for my savior sanity sleep boot camp. You can check that out on tiny transitions.com forward slash tools where that registration and all of my downloads including a sample schedule generator, and my seven tips for your baby to sleep through the night are all available. I look forward to seeing you out here soon. Have a beautiful rest of the week. Bye for now. Hold on one more thing before you go. As a valued listener of the kids sleep show. I want to help you build a great sleeper not
just in the times you’re listening to the show. But all day every day. Every week of the year. I have a new Facebook group called slumber Made Simple. It’s a place to gather with other parents looking for sleep support laughs and the latest in sleep research to build a family that is rested and at their best day in and day out. If you want to be part To the community where you can get free sleep support, weekly training sessions, unbelievable content and so much more. Head on over to tiny transitions.com forward slash community. That’s tiny transitions.com forward slash community or head over to Facebook and search slumber Made Simple. drop me a note and let me know when you join. I can’t wait to see you there.