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Those Without Heating... How do you Keep your Toodler Warm at Night??

98 replies

QS90 · 11/11/2022 22:11

Just that really. I have a two year old, who no longer sleeps through because he gets cold in the early hours. His room temperature fluctuates between about 13 and 17 degrees Celsius. I put him to sleep in a long sleeved vest, sleepsuit, extra thin sleep sack and a toddler duvet. Apprehensive to pile on too many blankets in case of suffercation / overheating. Have also read electric blankets and hot water bottles aren't safe until age 5? Anyone got any tips??

OP posts:
KweenieBeanz · 11/11/2022 22:59

Those saying 13-17 degrees is normal....13 degrees is not normal for an indoor temp. There is a huge difference between how cold you'll feel at 17, and how you'll feel at 13. 13 degrees and the air will simply feel cool on your face and neck and there is no amount of layers etc will make that feel better.
Most homes if heated adequately in the day do not drop to 13 overnight.

KweenieBeanz · 11/11/2022 23:04

At 14-15 degrees you risk diminishing your resistance to respiratory disease.

13 degrees is not normal or healthy as an indoor temperature and people need to stop claiming it is.

Solasum · 11/11/2022 23:04

you can get microwaveable animals that you can heat up and use instead of a hot water bottle

ReedRite · 11/11/2022 23:10

KweenieBeanz · 11/11/2022 23:04

At 14-15 degrees you risk diminishing your resistance to respiratory disease.

13 degrees is not normal or healthy as an indoor temperature and people need to stop claiming it is.

Agree with this. 13 is way too low. You’re risking health at that temperature and those talking about heating the person not the room are overlooking the risk of mould growth, which is very hazardous to health.

The lung charities are warning of huge health impacts to come this winter if people don’t or can’t heat their homes adequately. Wood burning stoves are a nightmare for health and air quality too.

If he’s saying he’s cold, can you not heat the room just a little bit more?

QS90 · 11/11/2022 23:22

@ReedRite I agree re the mould - I have checked his room and there is none. I have a UVC lamp that I periodically blast the bedrooms with (obviously with the windows covered, everyone downstairs etc), as I detest the stuff. Also damp traps in potential problem areas. We have a very old heating system we can't replace atm, due to cost but also the upheaval (boiler is behind gas fire, in a wall 🙄). It has no thermostat or timer - the options are "full blast, one hour only" and "full blast, continuous". I do really wish we'd had it updated sooner, but wasn't a priority when we moved in and we're childless, and energy costs weren't as high.

OP posts:
Narwhalsh · 11/11/2022 23:22

A fleece onesie/sleepsuit will help keep him toastie. I’m actually amazed at the amount of people who heat their homes through the night! My middle boy is 3 and likes to be extra toasty at night so he has a duvet and a fluffy blanket and he will put the fluffy blanket under the duvet when he’s a bit chilly. Their room is regularly 15 overnight. We all sleep better when the room is cool but cosy under the duvet. If he’s kicking off his duvet you could get a single size duvet and put it lengthways across his bed and tuck the long sides under the mattress so he’s tucked in

parsniiips · 11/11/2022 23:23

Layers.

Vest and socks underneath a sleep suit/babygro. Thick winter tog sleeping bag and a blanket. The sleeping bag meant covers couldn't be kicked off and get cold.

We had a gro egg thermometer in the bedroom to draw attention to particularly cold nights. It would go red for too hot, amber for just right and blue for too cold.

parsniiips · 11/11/2022 23:25

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Those Without Heating... How do you Keep your Toodler Warm at Night??
Those Without Heating... How do you Keep your Toodler Warm at Night??
QS90 · 11/11/2022 23:26

@ToughAndDurable Does the airer thing get very hot to the touch? That is, if he got up in the night and touched it, would it be a burn risk for you think? I've heard they are quite low energy.

OP posts:
AnonWeeMouse · 11/11/2022 23:29

Sleeping bags.

Good old fashioned camping sleeping bags.

They're designed to hold heat in far better than bedding type bedding.

Find a rectangle.sleeping bag that can be unzipped and opened up, cheapest you can find will do the job fine.

Also,
Double duvet on a single bed, folded in half.
This way you get half the duvet beneath you, half of it above then covered with a heat reflecting sleeping bag..

This is how I set mine and my daughter's bed up. It's so cosy and so warm and so cheap.
(If it gets really cold, zip the sleeping bag back up, put that in the folded duvet and it'll insulate against most forms of heatloss, it's heatloss that makes you cold.)

purpleme12 · 11/11/2022 23:29

This thread has made me realise Gro Bag has been taken over ☹️

pumpkinelvis · 11/11/2022 23:39

He's prob not cold but just knows being next to someone else is snuggly. My dc10 still gets in for a cuddle in the morning and always thinks it's warmer- it's not. It's just me in there(dh leaves a few hours earlier) we have the same tog quilt.

QS90 · 11/11/2022 23:41

@parsniiips What a useful resource, thanks!

OP posts:
SkylightSkylight · 11/11/2022 23:42

Treeeeeeee · 11/11/2022 22:19

Put the heating on. Your child shouldn't suffer

How kind of you to offer to pay!

HowcanIhelp123 · 11/11/2022 23:45

The type of mattress can help. Some memory foam materials hold the heat better than others. We have a hybrid mattress and as cold as it is at the beginning of the night, once we warm it up a bit the bed feels toasty at 10 degrees (heating broke not the norm) with only a 13.5 tog duvet.

SkylightSkylight · 11/11/2022 23:52

KweenieBeanz · 11/11/2022 22:59

Those saying 13-17 degrees is normal....13 degrees is not normal for an indoor temp. There is a huge difference between how cold you'll feel at 17, and how you'll feel at 13. 13 degrees and the air will simply feel cool on your face and neck and there is no amount of layers etc will make that feel better.
Most homes if heated adequately in the day do not drop to 13 overnight.

My bedrooms do as don't like them stuffy so have the windows open.

13° is NOT too cold at night. I can't cope with heating on overnight, it's stuffy & headache inducing.

hellosunshineagainxxx · 11/11/2022 23:54

We put two pairs of pjs. Bought a few the size up and layered. Duvet too but found double pjs worked because he couldn't kick them off. Now he is 3 he keeps duvet on so just vest and one pair of pjs is enough

InTheFutilityRoomEatingBiscuits · 12/11/2022 00:08

The people that say they never have the heating on overnight are utterly missing the point here. When you have the heating on during the day or evening, or you heat the house in some way eg by having a fire, or running hot water in the pipes, or having a a space heater you are introducing heat. The house will benefit from that residual heat, throughout, for days afterward, even if just a little. If you then heat the house again the next day, it will boost it again, and on and on it goes. The house will never be allowed to become cold in the way a house with no heat source becomes cold. Earlier in my life, with a small DC, I had no form of heating and no form of hot water in my home. No baths, no showers, no warm hand washing, no heating, no fires, no warm water running in the pipes or radiators, no fires. Just one small space heater that couldn’t be run with a baby or toddler DC in the room as it glowed bright orange light and would burn you if touched, and only enough money to put it on here and there for max 20 minutes if we were very, very cold. It reached 3 degrees indoors that winter. We had chilblains. The air was cold, the furniture was cold, the walls were freezing to the touch. You could see your breath, inside the house. The damp and cold went into the clothes and soft furnishings which never felt fully dry and always smelled fusty. The rooms went mouldy with black mould inside the plaster and white mould on and running through the carpets. The floorboards couldn’t dry out from cleaning and started to rot on the surface. One day, the pipes froze, and then burst, which sprayed ice cold water throughout the house and flooded. There was no money for home insurance. There was no money to go and stay in a hostel or to have the leak fixed or the damage put right. The house nearly rotted around us and took years, and thousands of pounds to fix, in the end. That’s what happens with no heating and no hot water. It’s not as simple as putting on an extra jumper, or even remotely the same as a house heated daily losing a little temperature overnight.

OP, I would sleep in the same bed as my DC to stay warm. We’d try to stay in the same room during the evening as we would sleep in so we could warm it up as much as possible. DC would wear the fleece onesies as we could never get cotton to feel dry, two fleece all in ones with socks under, then their coat on before bed, coat came off a second before jumping under the covers and we had a fleece blanket first again for damp reasons, then the duvet, then two more blankets on top, heavy ones. I didn’t have hot water bottles or hotties but I would definitely have tried those if I could.

stargirl1701 · 12/11/2022 00:08

We dressed our DC in merino wool layers including the sleeping bags. Toasty! We have never had heating on overnight.

Hungrycaterpillarsmummy · 12/11/2022 00:11

Surprised at the comments about it not being cold at 13 deg. Is bloody is. My throat gets sore breathing in cold air all night!

Hungrycaterpillarsmummy · 12/11/2022 00:14

InTheFutilityRoomEatingBiscuits · 12/11/2022 00:08

The people that say they never have the heating on overnight are utterly missing the point here. When you have the heating on during the day or evening, or you heat the house in some way eg by having a fire, or running hot water in the pipes, or having a a space heater you are introducing heat. The house will benefit from that residual heat, throughout, for days afterward, even if just a little. If you then heat the house again the next day, it will boost it again, and on and on it goes. The house will never be allowed to become cold in the way a house with no heat source becomes cold. Earlier in my life, with a small DC, I had no form of heating and no form of hot water in my home. No baths, no showers, no warm hand washing, no heating, no fires, no warm water running in the pipes or radiators, no fires. Just one small space heater that couldn’t be run with a baby or toddler DC in the room as it glowed bright orange light and would burn you if touched, and only enough money to put it on here and there for max 20 minutes if we were very, very cold. It reached 3 degrees indoors that winter. We had chilblains. The air was cold, the furniture was cold, the walls were freezing to the touch. You could see your breath, inside the house. The damp and cold went into the clothes and soft furnishings which never felt fully dry and always smelled fusty. The rooms went mouldy with black mould inside the plaster and white mould on and running through the carpets. The floorboards couldn’t dry out from cleaning and started to rot on the surface. One day, the pipes froze, and then burst, which sprayed ice cold water throughout the house and flooded. There was no money for home insurance. There was no money to go and stay in a hostel or to have the leak fixed or the damage put right. The house nearly rotted around us and took years, and thousands of pounds to fix, in the end. That’s what happens with no heating and no hot water. It’s not as simple as putting on an extra jumper, or even remotely the same as a house heated daily losing a little temperature overnight.

OP, I would sleep in the same bed as my DC to stay warm. We’d try to stay in the same room during the evening as we would sleep in so we could warm it up as much as possible. DC would wear the fleece onesies as we could never get cotton to feel dry, two fleece all in ones with socks under, then their coat on before bed, coat came off a second before jumping under the covers and we had a fleece blanket first again for damp reasons, then the duvet, then two more blankets on top, heavy ones. I didn’t have hot water bottles or hotties but I would definitely have tried those if I could.

Sorry to miss the point but why no insurance?!
And where did the thousands of pounds come from to fix the house? Surely that money could've been used to invest in a boiler?

QS90 · 12/11/2022 00:17

@InTheFutilityRoomEatingBiscuits Goodness, that sounds awful! So sorry you had to go through this, must have been harrowing 😬

OP posts:
QS90 · 12/11/2022 00:20

@Hungrycaterpillarsmummy You know, I've woken up with a sore throat a lot of times recently. Thought I was ill, but then it went away after a coffee each morning. So put it down to just a weird pregnancy thing. It can be cold air then?? I'd never made the connection 🤔

Love the username btw!

OP posts:
Hungrycaterpillarsmummy · 12/11/2022 00:33

Yes it really could be. Are you able to heat one bedroom and all sleep in it?