Thermometers

[Hoping87]

Hi first time mum starting to get things together...looking for recommendations for thermometers please! X

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MNHQ

I think we just got one from the local chemist. It's always seemed to work just fine

Unless your child has serious need to have an accurate and regular temperature check, just get a cheap digital thermometer. There's no need for a typical child to have one of those singing and dancing £30-40 ones. Don't waste your money

I'd really recommend the Braun age precision thermometer. It's about £10 on Amazon. Cheap ones have never been reliable for me. So it's a false economy.

I'm an ex medic so not someone with health anxiety. I just think its good to get an accurate temp!!

I have always found Braun in ear ones to be worth the money. The underarm ones work great til they start wriggling, or you want to check without undressing them. The forehead ones aren’t really accurate enough. Just get an in ear one from the start I’d say.

I got my braun thermoscan in the sale at asda for 15, its been worth every penny over the last few years. So fast and easy.

Dd2 has been in hospital twice for uti's and we asked about thermometers, as we need to keep a regular eye on her temp as this seems to be the 1st sign of a UTI for her.

The nurses told us the digital underarm ones are best, especially wen they are so little. The in-ear ones seem to be less reliable for babies as the ear pieces are too big for them. And in fact our hospital now only use the digital underarm ones on the paediatric wards now.

We were using an ear one to start with, and were getting different readings every time (dd is 4 months). Since switching to the arm ones it is much more consistent.

We bought one of those non-contact ones you point at their forehead (I think its infrared or something like that), which seemed like a good idea at the time, and someone bought us an underarm digital one as well.

Then when DS got a fever with a virus the non-contact thermometer was showing a scary reading of over 41 degrees, when the underarm showed a better (but still not great) temp of 38.5. Cue panicked call to 111 and they got us a quick out of hours appt with the gp, partly due to the difference in temp readings.

We took both thermometers with us, and when the doctor checked the temp with his 'proper' thermometer, we compared what both of ours said. The non contact one consistently came up 2 or more degrees over, but the underarm one was accurate.

GP said the non contact thermometers are only really good for checking if a temp is reducing on a sleeping baby you don't want to wake!