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

'Stop putting the willies up all the young mothers on here who are wondering how they are going to keep their babies healthy this winter.'

I don't think she is doing that, I think she's just trying to counteract all the guidance that scares new parents into thinking their babies are going to die if you put a blanket over them when it's freezing

Myself and a teen who runs hotter than me.

The thing is, in the past they wrapped them up because cold was a very clear and known risk. Babies that get too cold do get chest infections etc. That's very dangerous for small people.

In the modern day, all of this wrapping combined with central heating is too much, that's why the advice has shifted to keep the baby cool and don't let them overheat. But older relatives will all tell you "That baby looks cold!" They were taught to fear a too-cold baby. We are taught to fear a too-warm baby.

Both too warm and too cold are a problem.

As a baby I lived in a cottage without even electricity- I'm old, but not that old - my newly married parents were just caught up in their romance!

We moved several times but I didn't live with central heating until I was 10. The windows were icy on the inside in winter. My mum heated our clothes on an electric heater just before we got up. We wore pyjamas and had lots of layers of bedding - sheet, blanket, eiderdown and bedspread - easy to remove a layer as it got warmer.

My whole life I have never had the heating on at night. Why would you need it when under a duvet? If I'm still cold, I add a blanket.

My mother used to keep the thermostat quite low - 16 degrees I think. When we complained, she told us to put on a jumper. Nowadays people seem reluctant to realise that that is what clothes are for basically. Winter dresses and tops nowadays have short sleeves, for example, because we expect to be able to turn up the heating. My work environment was so warm until we started having to keep all the windows open due to covid, that I was always careful not to wear thicker, warmer clothes even in the middle of winter.

Babies have survived in February just fine for millennia and certainly since the advent of modern medicine, without constant CH.

Well, it was my first HV who recommended co-sleeping to me and thank goodness she did. Yes she was going off guidance but she was pragmatic and actually extremely helpful.
My baby, like many babies, just would not go down in a cot (even in the hospital she refused to sleep in the little side bassinet thing, one after the other midwife said they’d get her down in it and they all failed!) So DH and I were taking it in turns to sit up with her and getting more and more exhausted.

My HV’s view was better to practice safe co sleeping than fall asleep in an unsafe way with the baby because you’re so exhausted. And when you read up on co sleeping deaths, that is pretty much always what has happened (on sofa/in between Mum and Dad/a smoker in the house/pillow and duvets around baby) - at least I couldn’t find record of a single one where the parent had followed guidelines.

Anyway, Im getting way, way off topic here, but occasional/unplanned co sleeping is extremely common (IIRC 75% of parents in first year), so it is good to be aware of it and how to do it properly. The sleep institute at Durham Uni had a lot of good info when I was researching it.

People who are saying they never have the heating on at night - has your boiler never broken down? There’s a world of difference between that and a heated house slowly losing residual heat overnight

DS grew up in uninsulated, mostly unheated houses in a warmer climate. It could get to single digits inside on winter nights and the electric oil heater did nothing when I did put it on. We coslept and dressed warmly.

Yes but the point is they didn't survive as well as they do now. Infant mortality is now extremely low, much lower than it was before central heating was commonplace. Obviously that isn't the only factor, but it is one of them.

When you have relative stability in one area (warmth) then you can afford to worry about smaller risks like overheating and suffocation as a by-product of trying to keep warm.

I had a baby last winter and we had multiple power cuts for many days at a time and even when the power was on we keep the thermostat at 17 in the day (heating is off at night). We room share (the advice anyway), we co sleep and when he was a new baby he used a sleeping bag with a long vest and a sleep suit and then either folded over the cuffs on the suit or socks as mittens. He was never cold-more the issue was me sleeping next to him so didn’t have the duvet up high-i wear fleece pjs!

It's like if you're starving, you don't worry about whether the food you're eating is GM free and balanced. You'd eat whatever is there. Only when there is abundance of food can you worry about the quality or type of it.

Woah! people turn there heat off at night? I'd die! I live in the celler of my families house (finished off rooms) but Its cold! I sleep in a outdoor jacket all winter (hat and gloves too) and still freeze!

Many people in England put small babies in separate rooms. They call it "the nursery" but the baby sleeps on her own. At least have her in your bedroom if you don't want to co-sleep, then you're not heating a separate room.

Just a tip on Gro bags, tk maxx or second hand sites are a good place to buy them.

That's not the impression I've had from her posts.

I agree that that kind of guidance is a problem. When my eldest was born they'd just come out with the "no blankets" recommendations. It was immediately clear to me that it was totally ridiculous in the kind of place we lived in, the air was frigid. I am not someone who normally shies away from breaking rules that clearly aren't fit for the situation, but even so with all the new mum hormones I felt a little stressed about it.

Mind you it was a good learning experience for being a new mum generally. Lots of the recommendations being made at the time are now the opposite, and there were always doctors and such pushing things that seemed idiotic, so it was worth learning to use my judgement.

We had no heating when I had babies ( rural unmodernised property) and we had an old filled radiator in their shared bedroom and a calor gas heater in the room we lived in.
Bath times are the most tricky part in a cold house.

People keep pulling you up on this and you're avoiding answering but surely you're not suggesting adults, children or babies can't survive a room temperature of 18c, dressed appropriately?

gro bags are your friend. You can get high tog ones. Vest, babygro, hat. Never had heating on overnight in my life. We brought DC up in drafty high ceiling Victorian house and they were fine.

Yeah, a good time to bath a baby is if the kitchen is warm after making dinner, give them a bath in the kitchen sink.

Yes, just asking other posters what they weigh? I'm a healthy weight, bmi 20. I sleep well in the winter at well below 18/19, as does my teen.

As @MrsMoastyToasty said, we were advised 16-18 C when my 14 yo dd was born...So the advice back then was to keep babies bloody cold. Dd often had cold hands but slept. Vest, baby gro / cotton pjs and a 2.5 tog sleeping bag in the winter. She slept in our room for the first year, which stayed warmer than hers. After that she moved to her room and slept well even though it sometimes dipped below 16 in there. I see the recommended temperatures these days is higher.

As for how I kept warm as a newbie? I know it’s not recommended. However, when dd was a newborn, she slept in my maternity nightdress in a nappy, facing me. I used an independent midwife, who said my body heat would keep her warm. Obviously I had to respect sleep hygiene and not cover dd with a duvet. I wore a cardigan and dressing gown with the duvet at waist level. The weather was relatively warm so idk if just wearing a nappy would suffice in the winter time, perhaps the baby would need a baby gro. But I really don’t know.

In the daytime, I wrapped her up warm as a baby and young child as her little hands were often cold. I kept the house at 20 max downstairs and 18 upstairs (for sleep) as we weren’t supposed to let them overheat, now were we?!

We have a little space heater that plugs in and only comes on when the temperature falls below a set point (I used 15 or 16 degrees). Was more economical than keeping the (old, very leaky) house warm when DS was tiny. Now he'll just be wrapped up in a warm sleeping bag and warm sleepsuit.

I just remembered, gro bag had a chart and still do. I see they now do 3.5 tog sleeping bags for lower temperatures. Maybe this is helpful?

In Nordic countries they leave babies to sleep in buggies outside cafes and on balconies (dressed appropriately in sleep outdoor suit) so they get the fresh air! so long as there isn’t an issue with damp, baby should be fine dressed appropriately indoors.

It’s really weird. I’ve never had the heating on at night; on the odd occasion I’ve forgotten to turn it off I wake headachey and stuffy so I really don’t want to, either. 18 degrees is what I’ve heated the house to in the daytime for years and I’m yet to freeze to death - it was perfectly comfortable with jeans and a jumper. Last winter with rising prices I turned the thermostat down to 16 then 15 and added a hoodie blanket and that was also fine (perhaps 15 was a bit low for the long term health of the house so I’ll probably try and stick at 16 this winter).

Growing up my mother, who herself grew up during post war austerity, never allowed the thermostat to be above 16 and never had the heating on at night. Somehow I and my siblings made it to adulthood alive.

Oh and it’s rude to ask about weight, but I don’t mind saying that I’m a little overweight at present (bmi 26) due to having been sick and unable to exercise, but all the above held true when I was a healthier bmi 23 until very recently.

@BrownTableMat I meant that that poster was asking me what I weighed, I'm not asking!