Tummy time is supervised, awake time spent placing your baby on their stomach on a firm surface. Its purpose is to build the muscle strength infants need to eventually lift their heads, roll over, crawl, sit up, and walk. You can start the day your baby comes home from the hospital, beginning with two to three short sessions of three to five minutes each day.
Why Babies Need Time on Their Bellies
Since the early 1990s, parents have been advised to put babies to sleep on their backs to reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome. That guidance has saved thousands of lives, but it also means babies spend a lot of time in one position. Tummy time exists to balance that out. When a baby lies face down while awake, they’re forced to work against gravity in ways that back-lying simply doesn’t require.
Being on the belly activates muscles across the core, back, neck, shoulders, arms, and even the hands. Babies use and develop these muscle groups to lift their heads off the floor, push up on their arms, and eventually learn to roll and crawl. Without regular practice in the prone position, these milestones can come later.
Muscles and Milestones It Supports
Tummy time strengthens the body in a surprisingly comprehensive way. The obvious targets are the neck and upper back, which your baby engages every time they try to look around. But it also works the core, hip flexors, and hand muscles. Babies who spend time on their stomachs learn to open and strengthen their hands, which lays the groundwork for fine motor skills like grasping, holding a spoon, and eventually writing.
One underappreciated benefit is balanced development. Tummy time encourages babies to turn their heads to both sides, lift up, and use muscles evenly across all four sides of the body. This symmetry matters for coordinated movement later on. Over the first six months, you’ll see a clear progression: your baby will go from barely lifting their chin to pushing up with straight arms and eventually rolling from tummy to back.
Preventing Flat Head Syndrome
Spending too many hours on their back can flatten the soft bones at the back of a baby’s skull, a condition called positional plagiocephaly. Around half of infants show some degree of head flattening by two months of age, though only about one in five of those cases are considered severe. Tummy time directly addresses this by taking pressure off the back of the skull. The more awake time your baby spends off their back, the less opportunity the flat spot has to develop or worsen.
Visual and Sensory Development
The benefits go beyond muscles. When babies are on their stomachs, they naturally lift and turn their heads, which engages the small muscles that control eye movement. This helps them learn to focus on objects, track things visually, and begin developing depth perception. They also get an up-close view of toys, books, or your face, which builds their ability to distinguish between shapes and colors.
Hand-eye coordination gets an early boost too. As babies push up and reach for objects during tummy time, they’re learning to coordinate what they see with what their hands are doing. These connections form the basis for skills they’ll use throughout childhood.
How Much Tummy Time Babies Need
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends starting with two to three sessions per day, each lasting three to five minutes. By seven weeks, the goal is to work up to 15 to 30 minutes of total tummy time each day. That total doesn’t need to happen all at once. Short, frequent sessions spread throughout the day are perfectly fine, especially in the early weeks when your baby may only tolerate a minute or two before fussing.
Your baby should always be awake and supervised during tummy time. This is strictly a daytime, eyes-open activity. Sleep should always happen on the back, on a flat surface. Tummy time and safe sleep are complementary practices: back to sleep, tummy to play.
Making Tummy Time Easier
Many babies dislike tummy time at first, which is normal. They’re working hard against gravity with muscles that are brand new. A few strategies help. Getting down on the floor face-to-face with your baby gives them something interesting to look at and a reason to lift their head. Placing a small rolled towel under their chest provides a little extra support and makes the position less demanding. Colorful toys placed just within reach give them motivation to push up and look around.
If your baby has torticollis, a condition where the neck muscles are tight on one side, tummy time becomes part of the treatment plan. A physiotherapist will typically recommend frequent short sessions with specific head positioning to gently stretch and strengthen the affected muscles. The rolled towel trick is especially useful here, as it reduces the effort needed while still encouraging the neck work that helps resolve the tightness.
You can also do tummy time on your own body. Lying back and placing your baby chest-to-chest on you counts, and many newborns tolerate this better than the floor in the first few weeks. As they grow stronger and more comfortable, transitioning to a firm surface on the floor lets them get the full benefit of pushing up independently.