How did you keep babies warm years ago?

[GarlicCrackers]

Posting here for traffic and visibility.

Also maybe a slight AIBU for being totally ignorant and naive!!

I am due my second child in Feb, due to recent events with my dearest wanker of a half - I am now single and my first thought was, well I better reduce the energy bill if I want to financially survive.

I am 33 so have never lived without central heating and modern amenities.

Sat down, looked at electrics, you know vampire devices, plugs that get left on. Moved on to heating. I like being cool, I dislike the heat so I think well hot water bottle at night and wear my oodie during the day. Heating off at night and we will all be fine. Will have the dogs upstairs and we can all share heat.

and then I remember….I’m pregnant, I’m due a baby in cold cold February. Babies can’t regulate heat they are tiny.

How did we keep babies warm before CH? I have grobags and blankets. Can they have hot water bottles? I can’t afford heating on all night but dear god will I get into energy debt if that’s my only choice

I know this sounds stupid, I just realised I have no idea. I see people talk about how no heating = constant chest infections etc

It never occurred to me to have heating on at night. I'd honestly never heard of it until reading it on MN.

When mine were little, they had the sleeping bag things and a blanket.
My dc1's room (north facing and 2 outside walls) could get cold so we bought a little oil filled radiator and put it on a time during the coldest nights so it came on for a couple of hours twice a night. The other two we never needed to do that as their room was always a bit warmer.

I suspect people dressed them warmly and heated only the room they were in. Our first was born in February in a very old draughty cottage. Literally there in a very old draughty cottage. It was so cold we got ice on the inside of windows and curtains literally blew in the wind.

We dressed her warmly and we used CH (we did have it, but just rubbish) in specific rooms plus an electric heater in whatever room we were in. If you have the option of a wood burner (for example, downstairs, not same room as baby), use that too.

As a kid I remember sleeping in an outdoor coat & a woolly hat. Bloody freezing bedroom with ice on the inside of the windows.

So layers really, wool is good as it regulates body temperature well.

Find the smallest room, thermal curtains, heat that room for the baby...

I've never had heating on all night either.
Just dress in lots of layers.
Try and keep the room you 'live' in warm but don't worry about the bedrooms.

When our first DD was born we lived in a flat with storage heaters which we never worked out how to use. She was a December baby. We put a hot water bottle in her bed before she went in it, and she wore quite thick fleecy pjs with a long sleeved vest underneath. Pjs with the arms which fold over their hands were great too. She sometimes wore thin PJs with thicker ones over the top. Then a high tog grobag and sometimes a blanket on top. She didn’t sleep much as a baby to be honest but we also co-slept a lot which helped.

Over a decade later and she never feels the cold!

I didn’t have central heating or hot water in my house when I had my first. I’m not old I just couldn’t afford those things then.
We did have a radiant heat plug in heater the sort that glow bright red. I would put that on and bathe the baby in the baby bath in front of it, with water from the kettle. Pretty sure they can’t have hot water bottles. No dogs here. The baby would wear a vest, socks, sometimes tights, a baby grow, a wool overall thing and sometimes a sleeping bag, and sometimes a blanket over the top of the sleeping bag. We did a lot of camping out in one room. If I had been heating a downstairs room with our portable heater (I guess or a fire in days gone by) on Cold nights we’d sleep together in the room we had warmed. I’d like to say I had thick curtains, insulation and solid draught excluders but I didn’t. I did stuff tights with old newspapers and papers to make draught excluders and fit fittedsheets over the tops and bottoms of curtains to make a kind of seal, bunching up the curtains underneath and fitting them over the pole and the windowsill. But I didn’t have money for internet either so most of these things came from my own imagination. I would shower at friends and family’s houses or wash at the sink. We made do. I think of it with a kind of fondness now. some nights we could see our breath indoors

My son was born early at 35 weeks, only 5lb. I used to keep him down the front of my shirt, and sleep with him in my bed, when he was tiny. And wrapped him up warm to go out. My body heat was very important to him.

It's not at all a stupid question and I expect that it's one that every single one of us asks. My baby was born 18 years ago and back then we were told to have the room temperature at 19 degrees celsius. I was there turning on and and off heat to keep it at that temperature and then I had two duvets over myself and my little girl had a vest, a babygro and two cellular blankets. My aunt on I think day 5, gently told me, her little hands are freezing, she can't sleep because she's too cold.

A blanket should do it. Have a look at how mothers in some Scandinavian families leave their children outside in their prams in sub-zero temperatures.

Overheating is a risk but that's usually a combination of high temperatures and smothering duvets.
Everyone tells you too, don't check a baby's temperature from their hands, check the back of the neck. That's bollocks. If your baby's little hands are blue and freezing, she's cold.

Wrapped up!!!!!!!!!!!

It's like saying that a baby can sleep or survive at 18/19 degrees. None of us really can. The guidance is against overheating. It's not there to freeze your poor baby to death either.

Those little sleeping bags are good. Get a thermometer and a guide to what to dress them in be careful you don't overheat.

Never have the heating on at night - gives me nightmares being too hot! - when DS was a babe he was always warm enough with his blankets etc- the only time I left it on very low overnight was a period in 2013 (ish?) when we had -15C at night for 3 weeks so it was on 10C and kicked in overnight. The water supply froze for most people that Winter (in Yorkshire) - feet of snow as well and permafrost.
Mil always recounts when she gave birth to BIL - was bitterly cold (about 1966!) and she took him into bed with her at hospital and I suppose 'co slept' as we would say these days- was very frowned upon back then but he was her 5th child and she told the nurses to sod off.

You don't need the house to be tropical - use your grobags and blankets and body heat so cuddles - not wanting to sound flippant (there have been some very vocal threads about going 'back to Victorian times' re heating) but fingers crossed you will manage x

My baby was born in a very cold late september and I had her wrapped up like a yeti in these snow suits. Outside. Because she was was on me or facing me. At night, I'd strip her off and put her into a comparatively cold room to sleep. I actually couldn't sleep it was that cold.

Those fleece onsies over a babygrow! My daughter was terrible for wriggling so she had those and Terry toweling onsies too none of this thin crap 🤣

For babies, please only get cellular blankets for over them. Honestly. Any sort of babygro thing is fine, but don't let them overheat. Genuinely, infant cot death has excess heat as a potential cause (which is strange as they say they don't know what causes it).

If I hadn’t co-slept with mine (in a big bed) I’d have had no sleep. It’s ok if you set it up safely. Like it has been for thousands of years.

Well yes, of course, but if a baby is fine we’ll wrapped-up in outdoors in Copenhagen in February they’ll also be fine wrapped up indoors in a slightly chilly flat in Manchester.

sleeping bag, socks on the hands and an extra blanket if needed. The baby will cry if it’s cold.

The guidance we give is that optimal room temp for 0-12 months is between 18 and 21 degrees.

wool is good. Babies did survive for centuries without central heating, I’m not saying for a minute that it is preferable to having central heating, but it can be done. Have never in my life had heating on at night.

Yep, and a single vest, a single babygro and two cotton cellular blankets?

What? You are honestly trying to claim that a wrapped-up baby will “freeze to death” at eighteen degrees?

I’m starting to understand now why so many people are struggling with energy bills, you all must think you’ll die if your house isn’t always at 24 degrees.

I had two duvets over me and my baby was in a Moses basket with nothing but the recommended blankets on her and she was blue with the cold until my aunt said 'that book might not know what we know'