Some babies do prefer to sleep on their tummies at an early age due to medical conditions such as gastric reflux. Whilst some parents may choose to sleep their babies on their tummies, the current guidelines from most professionals are to place all babies under the age of 12 months on their back to sleep, and return babies to their back to sleep should they roll over if they are under the age of 6 months and/or unable to roll well both ways. Back sleeping has been shown to reduce the risk of SIDS (aka cot death) significantly, even in those babies who can roll and/or lift their head. Please discuss which position may be acceptable for your baby with an appropriate medical professional in your own area before acting on any advice given by BW members regarding this. For added reassurance for parents of tummy sleepers, there are monitors that alarm if breathing or motion are not detected, however these have not been shown to reduce the risk of SIDS.
References:
http://www.lullabytrust.org.uk/document.doc?id=295http://www.healthychildren.org/english/ages-stages/baby/sleep/pages/Preventing-SIDS.aspx http://sids.org/what-is-sidssuid/featured-questions/http://fsid.org.uk/document.doc?id=43
