How is your baby sleeping with the arrival of colder weather?

 
Is your baby still sleeping soundly with this temperature change lately?? 

This time of year when the seasons and the temperatures change can be tricky. Knowing your baby is warm enough is a common thought of many parents at any time of year but particularly now.  Often it is still reasonably warm when they go to bed, but during the night and early hours of the morning , it all changes. The drop in temperature can be the single culprit for babies waking up pre dawn.

Even though they may seem warm enough, if this is happening and you can’t work out what it is, simply adding another layer of warmth may fix this and prevent or reduce the occurrence.  If it is warm when your baby goes to bed,  an option is to add a layer when you go to bed or at a night feed time.

A few tips for safety.

Always use breathable materials. Cotton is recommended because it is lighter.  A number of layers of thinner material is usually more efficient than one layer of thick artificial  material such as doonas.  Thicker doonas don’t breathe as much and can be the culprit of your baby over heating and becoming uncomfortable.

Always leave your baby’s head uncovered.  Your baby loses heat from their head.  It is a large surface area in comparison to their body and is useful to act as a little bit of a temperature control mechanism.  When they are up and about and outside and it is cold by all means put hats or beanies on their head, just not at night.  Hats can also move around at night in the cot and can be a suffocating hazard.

Sleeping bags are fantastic  for night time sleep  particularly when the temperature is dropping or is a bit changeable. When your baby is moving around in the cot, having a sleeping bag means that they will not kick off blankets and be cold and wake up. You may need to dress a few layers underneath the sleeping bag to help your baby’s comfort  level.  And there are a number of thicknesses of sleeping bag for different temperatures.

Sometimes it takes a little bit of trial and error to get the right one.   It is worth it for a good nights’ sleep for everyone.