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

Start out cosleeping. By the time the baby is ready to go into her own room the weather will be better.

This is what my grandparents did back in 1930s Ireland in a little thatched cottage with no heating except the fire in the kitchen.

My mum and her siblings wore cotton flour sack undergarments made by hand and hand knit cardigans and jumpers, with wool tights buttoned to the tops. Granny made felted wool booties too, and winter babies wore wool bonnets day and night. Nowadays there's fleece, but wool is still great.

I‘m so confused about how “none of us” can sleep at 18/19? Isn’t this quite warm for a night time temperature especially for an adult?

It depends on how stupid they assume you to be. What you aim for is a temperate climate in the bedroom with fitting clothing for the room temperature.
A body temperature is 36' or 37'
19 degrees, and cold air in the room and dropping temps during the night, and a baby with 2 little blankets over its tiny body will cool.
Similarly, 25' and your Mom brings you into bed under a duvet and you can see how that baby might overheat.
It's hard to give general guidance,

How much do you weigh?

When ds was born 16 years ago we were advised to keep the heating between 16-18°c and that they should have one more layer of clothing than we would have.
I have a 1930s house and there's fireplaces in the bedrooms so unless people couldn't afford it they probably had a coal fire going.

I was given the same advice and my mother concluded that me requiring two duvets was the equivalent to my baby requiring two cotton cellular blankets!!!!!!!!

10 degrees is the normal drop in autumn. It goes further down to close to zero and minus zero in certain times.

Would you sleep on the lawn, with nothing but a sheet over ya at 10 degrees?

If you can please don't let your house go below 16. Babies can get coughs and pneumonia in the cold , mold will grow also making baby cough. I hope they bring in extra support for babies and the elderly.

Our house doesn’t have central heating. We have a fire in the living room, nothing in the kitchen (the oven helps in winter!), an electric heater in the bathroom and no heating in the bedrooms or landing. We do now have leccy blankets to warm the beds before getting in. DD (now 17) has never slept in a heated room and she’s hale and hearty. Warm jammies, two feather duvets and socks when it’s really cold. Simple.

If if comes down to cold rooms, wrap them up in fleece blankets and against your skin. A warm bottle (or breastfeeding I suppose) will warm them from inside.
You have to remember that babies are tiny and are not active in any way so they can't start doing squat jumps. They need their Mum or Dad to keep them warm.

Unless they're Scottish 😆

This is about babies. Not 17 year olds.

Women all over the world and for all time have kept their babies very close to them, and part of that is using your body heat to regulate that of your baby. Read up on how to safely co sleep, and do that.

18-19°C is the minimum apartment building temperature that landlords are required by city ordinance to maintain over the six winter months in a nearby midwestern US city that gets frigid winters.

I was responding to your assertion that most of “us” ie adults don’t sleep at 18/19. Surely most adults sleep in lower than 18/19 half the year? - unless you have the heating on at night, which I would suggest the majority of people don’t.

If you’re a baby, then I guess you want it to be 18/19 or so at night unlike an adult who sleeps under more blankets and therefore is fine when it’s 16…? Gro-bags have different togs for winter and summer so you switch to a 2.5 tog when it’s 16-20oC according to the temperature guide for that tog.

It was never really something I worried about much though. I co-slept and breastfed throughout the night, your body keeps the baby at optimal temperature.

Read up on safe co-sleeping. Your body has all the warmth your baby needs!

It's been a few years but i'm pretty sure when mine were little the ideal bedroom temp for a baby overnight was not more than 18 degrees anyway. I always had a little digital thermometer for wherever they were sleeping (home or away) so I knew what was normal and if extra bedding would be required. If you need to bring one room up a degree or two for a consistent temperature then a very small plug in oil filled radiator will do that. DD's bedroom was over the garage so always needed a bit of extra heat compared to everywhere else and that worked for us.

Absolutely this. When we were travelling in a very cold climate with a little baby we had the baby with us all the time. They need your heat. Read up on safe sleeping. Overheating is a worry, yes but a very cold baby can be equally as dangerous, obviously.

Safe co-sleeping all the way. Superking bed, absolutely lovely.

I like a warm house and I hate being cold but I’ve never had the heating on all night. Not to save money but because bedclothes do the job of keeping you warm at night! My babies did just fine in their babygros and sleeping bags.

My brother was a prem baby born at 35 weeks weighing 4lb, he was born in 1972, we had no central heating. My mum used to bath him in a washing up bowl on the dining table then put him to bed in a thick flannelette nightie when he was tiny with brushed cotton sheets & loads of cellular blankets, when he grew a bit she put him in a long sleeved vest & babygrow. She had a big Silver Cross proper pram & she had a sleeping bag & a couple of blankets in it, she used that for daytime naps. He always had a bad chest right from being born that never improved until he had his tonsils out when he was 12. We nearly lost him a couple of times when he was in the incubator, the nurses begged her to have him christened in the hospital because they thought he wouldn't make it but she refused because she thought it was tempting fate.

Please don't advocate co-sleeping. It's extremely dangerous.

Two of my children were born in January 50 and 44 years ago. We didn't have central heating, in fact no heating upstairs and a storage heater and open fire downstairs. At night they wore vest, babygro and two or three small wool blankets covering them. My mother, who had trained as a nursery nurse in the 1930s was always insisted babies needed to be well wrapped up but equally keen that they should be taken out in the fresh air every day. I think the old fashioned prams kept them much warmer as deeper.

Please don't advocate co-sleeping. It's extremely dangerous

Co-sleeping unsafely is dangerous. Safe co-sleeping is not dangerous.

I had a baby in feb and we didn't ever have the heating on at night. Baby will be fine dressed and wrapped up appropriately.

I do seem to remember when my two weere very small we had the house at 21 degrees overnight. That's with a long sleeve vest and a grobag thing on.