Best for Baby | Expert Baby Advice & Support for Overwhelmed Mums
Sep 18, 2026 · 36 min · 12 segments
Struggling with tummy time? In this episode paediatric physiotherapist, Lisa goes back to basics on one of the most confusing and most important parts of early infant development. You'll learn why…
And I want to go back to the original message and make it really, really clear for parents.
It's the most important developmental activity you can do with your baby.
Parents always say to me, how much is enough and how do I do it? Particularly if my baby doesn't do it.
My usual answer is the likelihood is that you probably can't do enough tummy time.
And that is because as we know in the past, babies slept on their tummies.
Nowadays, safe guidelines say our babies need to sleep on their backs overnight when we're not supervising them.
Our babies are now flat on their backs asleep because now people are really afraid of letting their babies sleep in any position other than being on their backs.
When we go for a walk, we put them in the baby bouncer, which is the same as being on their back, even though it's at an angle.
And so that all adds up and our babies are now perhaps spending 19, 20 hours a day flat on their back on quite a firm surface.
And so in the past, when they were sleeping on their tummies, which we now know is not safe and we don't put our babies to sleep at night on their tummies.
But in the past, when they were doing that, they would have been spending, I don't know, if you add up all the naps and sometimes they had those big wide push chairs, babies would go out lying on their tummies and those as well.
So they could have been spending anything between 12 and 19 hours on their tummies in the past.
And I want to go back to the original message and make it really, really clear for parents.
It's the most important developmental activity you can do with your baby.
Parents always say to me, how much is enough and how do I do it? Particularly if my baby doesn't do it.
My usual answer is the likelihood is that you probably can't do enough tummy time.
And that is because as we know in the past, babies slept on their tummies.
Nowadays, safe guidelines say our babies need to sleep on their backs overnight when we're not supervising them.
Our babies are now flat on their backs asleep because now people are really afraid of letting their babies sleep in any position other than being on their backs.
When we go for a walk, we put them in the baby bouncer, which is the same as being on their back, even though it's at an angle.
And so that all adds up and our babies are now perhaps spending 19, 20 hours a day flat on their back on quite a firm surface.
And so in the past, when they were sleeping on their tummies, which we now know is not safe and we don't put our babies to sleep at night on their tummies.
But in the past, when they were doing that, they would have been spending, I don't know, if you add up all the naps and sometimes they had those big wide push chairs, babies would go out lying on their tummies and those as well.
So they could have been spending anything between 12 and 19 hours on their tummies in the past.
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