Elevated Side Lying Position

An elevated side lying position can be helpful for infants who are preterm (<34 weeks), late preterm (<37 weeks) or infants with tone issues (hypotonia/hypertonia) and special needs. This can be particularly helpful if your infant tends to spit out milk, struggles to stay latched to bottle, can not maintain proper suction during feedings and for our uncoordinated preterm babes. Let’s take a deeper look.

Here we see Baby Carl (aka Baby Carlito) in a side lying position on his Mother’s lap, with a pillow under for support and also edge of bed for further elevation. Mother is also supporting baby’s chin and cheeks with gentle pressure to help maintain suction. (Crocheted boob is standing in for bottle here)

Here we see a closer picture of our infant with structural support again on chin and cheeks. This can be especially helpful if our infant tends to spit milk out of mouth during feed, lose suction on bottle and for our preterms who may be uncoordinated.

Here we see our infant in the side lying position without structural support. Some infants do not struggle with maintaining latch despite being premature or having special needs. This position can help with reflux as well.