Hi. I was wondering how many of you have tried tummy sleeping. My baby will not sleep on her back. She wakes up every 30 minutes-1hour. I tried tummy sleeping a couple of nights last week and she slept for 3-5 hour stretches. It was great, but then on Monday my doctor was really worried about it and said I shouldn't let her sleep on her stomach because of SIDS (yeah I know about that). She made it sound like the risk was so high. Now I'm worried about letting her sleep that way......but since Monday we've gotten no sleep. She's been up almost every 30 minutes at times. Also, Monday night she started rolling on to her stomach.....is it okay to leave her that way? She only slept on her stomach parts of two nights, but she obviously prefers it. My dd is 4 months old and waking up every hour is really wearing me out.

Does anyone have any advise or tips for tummy sleeping?

BioAdoptMom-You were right about the tummy sleeping. It really helped, but now I'm so paranoid:confused:

If she is rolling onto her stomach, then there is not much you can do about it unless you are going to stay up all night flipping her back and forth! Lol, I know as a new mom I was paranoid enough to do something like that! I must admit that we tummy slept DS from 1 month on, because he nor we were getting ANY sleep. We just made sure that we were covering our bases on all the other SIDS risks, like not smoking, not having anything in the crib, and he also slept in the room with us. I am a little surprised that your doctor would tell you not to let her sleep on her tummy if she is rolling. Does he she really expect you to stay up 24/7 watching her sleep? I am not a doc, so this is just my opinion. I would call the doc again and make sure he/she knows your DD is rolling on her own.

The doctor didn't know she was rolling because she started rolling onto her tummy the night I put her back on her back because of what the doctor said. I'm in Germany right now and I think all of the doctors here are overly cautious about everything.

My DS is 7 months now, but from about 4 weeks old, he started to roll/wiggle over on his own onto his belly. There was NOTHING I could do to make him stay on his back or side, plus he hated every minute of sleeping on his back and woke up all the time. So, from 4 weeks on---he was a tummy sleeper ONLY. I just made sure to NOT put anything in his crib to ensure he wouldn't have anyting in the way of his little face that could possibly obstruct his breathing. :) My pediatrician is old school----and she totally supports and encourages tummy sleeping as babies sleep better and longer that way. The risk of SIDS is very rare---babies die more often of aspiration and choking on formula and saliva. If your DD can at least turn/switch her head position from one side to the other, then she will be OK.

Don't get me wrong, the first couple of weeks of tummy sleeping, I would wake up a couple of times a night to make sure everything was OK with DS---just to make sure. Ya know---mama nerves! hehe :) Also note, from 4 weeks on, he became a MUCh better sleeper. He started sleeping through the night first 6-8 hours minimum and now sleeps minimum of 10 hours. :)

My dd is 5 months old and has been sleeping on her tummy for almost a month.Once she started to roll, we were up all night rolling her back.So we started putting her to bed on her tummy.She is now sleeping 12 hours at night with maybe 1 wake up if at all!:) It's a personal choice but for us, it works!! Good luck!:wave:

When our first two were born we were actually told to put them on their tummies to sleep from day one. I am not exaggerating when I say that our babies (unless they happened to be colicky) slept the clock around day and night, usually only waking to eat for the first two to three months of life. The problems I hear about now were rare if they existed at all. No one ever heard of sleep training or infant reflux and I wonder if there is a connection between that and back sleeping. At any rate, the actual rate of SIDS is not even 1 in 1000 on the tummy for a newborn. For a back sleeper it is still around 1 in 1500. When we adopted our daughter she would wake every hour all night long and this was so foreign to us. We thought something was seriously wrong with her. One night when she had a cold at the age of six weeks we put her in her carseat to sleep upright. She slept six hours straight that night, sick! We figured out right then and there that being flat on her back was what was waking her so much. We tried her tummy that night (we weren't that nervous because of the fact that we had been parents since 1987) and she did the same thing again. When I told her ped she told me that we had tried the back and it wasn't working. She also told us that she had a greater chance of being struck by lightning than of dying of SIDS on her tummy. In addition, as the others have said, if she is rolling on her own there is nothing you can do about it anyway, plus when they start rolling the already low risk of SIDS is decreased even further.

Nancy

My DS was a preemie and spent 91 days in the NICU, sleeping on his tummy. He was hooked up to monitors, so it was no big deal. When we finally brought him home, the nurses told us to put him on his back to sleep. He wouldn't sleep like that at all. I was exhausted, because of the stress of finally bringing a tiny preemie home, plus he wasn't sleeping, so I finally tried putting him on his tummy, and he slept great.

I agree that if your little one is already rolling over, then tummy sleeping is fine. If you're really worried, you can buy a monitor that goes in the crib that will sound if the baby stops breathing. I think its called a SIDS monitor.

Another thing you can do to decrease SIDS risk is to give 'em a pacifier. The American Academy of Peds. recommends this because apparently the sucking motion keeps the baby in a slightly less asleep mode, which they think might be the cause of SIDS (that the baby gets into such a deep sleep that the brain shuts down).

I know that paci's have their own issues, but it's something that you can transition off of later.