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

If you're 22 stone, yeah, you're a veritable heat monster.
A baby, will freeze very quickly.

@Oldcottoneye that's the one.

Just double checked lullaby trust and they actually state cooler than me! 16-20 degrees, it must have changed.

I wish Trusts would alert us to these changes in guidance. It's impossible to keep yourself up to date with it all.

Babies did not 'survive ' without central heating. Some died. Many got pneumonia or chest infections.

In refugee camps or poor parts of the world.. for eg. Afghanistan during winter..babies die of cold.

@Oldcottoneye that's concerning... what was the room temp?

It does sometimes astound me when I walk into a postnatal visit and the house is absolutely stifling hot. Baby is wrapped up in a gazillion layers and clammy.

You want them to be slightly on the cooler side than on the warmer side.

I worry about this with my two babies. I'm just going to keep the heating on in their room and keep all curtains closed to keep the warmth in as much as possible. We have crap elec heaters but sounds like you have a modern system so could use a timer.

Luckily with newborns you don't really need to bath them either and certainly not every day so can hold of doing that until March time or just do a few.

I also heard today, and don't know if it's true that you can't be cut off if you have kids under 12.

It's all bollocks darlin.
The problems occur when the baby's body overheats.

A temperate temperature of 19 degrees is freezing a baby if you're also only putting two cold cellular blankets on them.
If you wrap a baby up and then stick it under a duvet against your hot self, the baby risks death.
They've tried to give guidance but there are as many mothers as there are babies and nobody wants a baby lost. Not even one.

I live in Scotland and I've had Feb and Nov babies. Never had the heating on over night.
Used a sleeping bag once they reached 12lb.
And used blankets before that

I had my 2nd DC in January last year and in preparation we bought a freestanding oil heater from Argos, cost £90 ( you plug it in)so we could make sure the bedroom was warm enough without having to have the whole heating system on. It was costly approx £0.20 per hour to run and did a great job. I was worried then with the rising prices but now things have just spiralled out if control

My eldest daughter was born in January. I live in Canada, and at that time we lived in a cottage that was mainly heated by a wood stove, so the bedroom was very cold at night.

I ended up having her sleep with us. That was more about trying to nurse in the night though, it was frigid to try and get up and that was not very good for the let-down!

But babies if well wrapped up can manage fine in cold - in some places they like to put babies outside to sleep in buggies because they think the cold is very good for them.

You wrapped them up but a lot of that is against SIDS guidance now. You would have put a hat on them indoors back then and blankets galore. These days you put a long sleeve vest under their baby gro, maybe a pair of socks underneath too, nice warm sleeping bag and they'll be ok with the heat off all night. Definitely no hats and no duvets. You don't need to keep the place super hot, it's safer to be on the cooler side but not cold either.

That's why you're made of hardy stuff! 😉

We lived in a draughty old Victorian flat and our ds came home at 34 weeks, he never had the heating on all night, it never occured to me and certainly wasn't told to by the hospital.

The guidelines are guidelines because they're aimed at general climates and at a variation of approaches to parenting.

Let me guess, he's now a strapping lad 6 foot tall?

No he's not.

He's 6ft 4 😉

He couldn't be any other way

It's a bit like the Spartans. If you can survive a Scottish Mammy, you'll survive anything.

The temperature on baby wards is usually about 30 degrees.

Southern Softy here.

Guidance is to never put a blanket over a sleeping bag! Have a look at the "what to wear" charts for sleeping bags (Tommee Tippee for example) and follow that. These tell you what tog sleeping bag to use at what temperature and with what clothes. Check out a Tommee Tippee sleeping bag on Amazon and the info should be there. Just making sure you are looking at a sleeping bag and not a swaddle bag etc. to get right info. Or Google "what to wear with any sleeping bag UK" and you will get lots of info - just check from decent source
Then you don't need to worry about a cold baby or overheating as you will be following expert guidance.

I'm Irish and second born, so don't cross me. 😆

Two winter babies in N Scotland, heating never on at night and barely in the day either because I like it cold! We coslept, which I think is what many people have done throughout history.

Over heating way worse than feeling cold for babies. Stick them in a baby sleeping bag thing.

My health visitor told me 'cold babies cry, hot babies die' terrified me

The problem is that the guidance for co-sleeping is not the same for sleeping normally and that's why they issue random ranges of temperatures. It's ridiculous. Co-sleeping is NOT A RECOMMENDED PRACTICE BTW.