4 Tips To Shelter A Newborn

Are you pregnant and will your child be born in winter? Quietly, we explain the 4 tips to shelter a newborn, keep reading.

How does a newborn self-regulate its body temperature?

Newborn skin is very thin, with little subcutaneous fat and blood vessels very close to the skin, which favors heat loss. Receptors on the baby’s skin send messages to the brain that the body is cold.

The newborn produces heat primarily through chemical thermogenesis. Chills, which are the main way to generate heat for children, are not effective in babies.

The newborn has a special and very efficient way of regulating its temperature that is carried out by metabolism, newborn babies have a special fatty tissue that has a high capacity to produce heat through chemical reactions.

When this fatty tissue is metabolized, the heat produced is transmitted to the major blood vessels and from there, to the peripheral blood vessels of the rest of the body, which at the same time narrow to prevent heat loss.

4 Tips to shelter a newborn

1. One more garment

Up to three months, newborns have difficulty regulating their body temperature and lose heat easily. They have little fat and also move little.

Sudden changes in temperature are not good for your newborn. So the best thing is that you think about what activity you are going to do and how long it will last, if you are going to be indoors with heating or outdoors.

It is best to wear several thin layers than few very thick layers, so if you enter a place where the temperature is higher you can remove some garment to avoid suffocating and sweating and your clothes are wet and you can catch a cold.

Therefore, as a general rule, the best advice is that your newborn baby should always wear one more piece of clothing than you would.

2. Type of fabric

Newborn clothes must be loose fitting and made of cotton as they allow them to perspire, absorb sweat and do not cause allergies. Preferably from organic cotton, which today many brands of children’s rofal and large stores sell, which in the long run shows the quality.

The best fabrics are cotton, wool, fleece, or velvet.

Do not forget that wool clothes should not be in direct contact with their skin, as they can be very irritating, and even inhale some of the wool through their small nose.

In addition, it is very important that you remove all the labels, to prevent them from rubbing or bothering you.

3. The temperature of the house

It is also essential that your child feels comfortable and protected at home.

Remember that the ideal temperature in the home is between 20 and 22 ºC and that it is necessary to ventilate well every morning to renew the air.

“The temperatures are not cold or warm, but it is hot or cold”

-Anonymous-

In addition, the heat from the heaters dries out your baby’s nostrils, which can hinder their protective function against microorganisms. For this reason, it is convenient that you humidify the environment a bit, for them it is best to place ceramic containers with water on top of some radiators.

4. Recognize if you are hot or cold

If we have doubts about whether it is warm or not, by touching its neck or back, under the clothes it is possible to perceive its temperature and check if the clothes are wet because they have sweated, in which case we must change them immediately.

The hands and feet are usually not a good parameter to determine if they are cold or not, because, especially in younger babies, they are usually cold all the time, because they do not yet regulate body temperature well.

That is why the best thermometer we have in our newborn is to touch his nose.

As we can see, in the newborn both excessive cold and heat are bad, and like everything in life, you have to know how to find the right balance.