When will parents realise that covering pushchair with blankets and muslin sheets is actually dangerous?

This is what I don’t get about women, why can’t we just share our experiences and knowledge as mothers without being a sanctimonious twat? They aren’t silly girls at all.

Have support for other women, some people genuinely don’t know these things and might need some guidance. We need to get better at that.

Of course
Apologies

The important thing to remember is that an overheating baby won't cry. But its very easy to check on your baby regularly. My younger DD would get very hot in a car seat so we used to strip her down to body suit on warm days in the car for example.

Plus, having had one baby in the UK and one abroad, I do think the British are obsessed with keeping babies cool... or maybe its the Germans obsessed with keeping them warm? Probably both. The layers they put on babies in Germany would make British mothers faint with horror (for example... vest, sleepsuit, cardigan, hat, sleeping bag and DUVET. In June.

It certainly CAN be hot enough here. That's a crazy notion to say it isn't.

Since I commented as maybe the third or fourth poster this has gone wildly into treating ‘mums’ like idiots. A couple of people have said their prams zip up or similar to encourage air flow but keep their baby shaded. Why can’t people trust that PARENTS not just mums as dads are able to make these decisions too, are aware of what they are doing and the safety of their child.

except the ones that are; saw a baby in a doona with the rain cover on yesterday in the heat, yes I did comment 👋🏽

So where is this evidence? That’s all I’m asking for - the evidence to back up mums being “silly little girls” for covering the hood of the pram with a muslin.

(This is all academic to me as DD (15) is a survivor of this practice, as are all the babies I knew at the time when I was doing this on a very irregular basis, but I’m still interested.)

The source of the NHS’s advice?

Africa is a continent, not a country, FYI.

We used parasols

Someone earlier shared the source of the advice. It isn't based on any babies dying.

I’ve read about it in the paper - years ago now.

No evidence from your Google search you mean. It doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened and the NHS guidance isn’t based on nothing.

There's no evidence that it has ever happened even once.

I had a really snug rain cover for one of my buggies and in the rain it would instantly steam up! I used to pull the side of the cover away from its fastening, as I was worried dd would overheat.

On the other hand I would happily put a muslin cloth over my pram, leaving a gap for airflow. I would check the air temp with my hand inside the pram area

I used to worry a lot more about dd overheating in the baby seat of my car!

If it’s 1 in 10000, would you want to prevent that 1? Doesn’t need to be ‘like flies’ to make it worth avoiding.

So the actual guidance doesn’t tell Mums not to use muslins then. What with them being lightweight and breathable.

Shame on anyone who thinks this is a reason to bully women with small children.

Yup. Having grown up in Africa, and having had my child as a baby there, I can confirm this. A light muslin type cloth if brilliant - provides shade from the sun and also stops tsetse flies and mosquitoes. And the baby can still breathe. Never seen a pram covered in a blanket, either at home or here.

I took my eldest to Australia when he was very young as my mum lived there, took a parasol which was a useless item but bought a really nice shade there instead so used that for all 4 of the kids could never seem to find anything similar here, my eldest is 24 so a few years ago now.

I think I’d know what to say to the sanctimonious ‘silly little girls’ poster honestly, you can educate people without belittling them and being an arse! I was 22 when I had my son but was also a fully qualified paediatric nurse, age clearly does not equate to knowledge or manners with some people

A muslin cloth is thin, light, and has holes in big enough to let liquid through, let alone air. It is not going to stop air circulating, especially if it's just hanging loosely from a pushchair hood. Very different from a blanket, which I take to mean woolly and warm.

My pram unzips and rolls up at the back and has mesh so it would look covered from the front but has air flow from the back maybe this is the case for some other prams too

There's a huge difference between a blanket and a muslin, both in how much heat is retained and how much air circulates through. YABU unreasonable for conflating them.

God. Parents like you are INSUFFERABLE with their high and mighty supposed superiority. If you kept your thoughts to yourselves, that would be one thing. But posting shite like this on a public forum is something else. Who do you think you are? More importantly: who and what do you think your readers are?

There's a huge difference between covering a pram with a thick blanket and a thin airy muslin.

You sound like a pretentious idiot.

The superiority is wafting off you. Plus, a dead baby wouldn’t be on your conscience, as in reality you would have no idea about whether a baby you saw, died or not.