Dressing Your Baby for Sleep

If you’ve been wondering how to dress your newborn for night-time, you’re not alone. For the first few days of our daughter’s life, we had no idea how to dress her to sleep.  After reading online that overdressing babies can be dangerous, we ended up under-dressing her.  Then because she was too cold, we ended up overdressing her.

According to the experts, the ideal nursery temperature is 16-20°C (61-69°F). We kept the temperature at 19-20°C because I thought that anything lower than that would be too cold for our newborn.   At first, we dressed our daughter in sleepers (with feet) and then, mainly because we were tired of undressing her for diaper changes during the night, we decided to try a Grobag sleeping bag.  With the Grobag, I could stop worrying whether my daughter was overdressed or under-dressed.  All I had to do was to follow the Grobag recommendations on how to dress the baby at specific temperatures when using the sleeping bag.  I did find that I had to dress my daughter slightly warmer than recommended or her feet and legs would be a bit cold.

Our Grobag worked well until our daughter got bigger and felt trapped in the sleeping bag.  She started moving a lot during the night and the bag would wrap around her tightly.  So, we decided to switch to sleepers.  The cotton ones we tried, didn’t keep her warm enough and she didn’t seem to like wearing the fleece ones.  I ended up dressing her in a cotton sleeper with a long-sleeved shirt and cotton pants underneath.

Next we tried wool longies from recycled sweaters which would work as diaper covers at the same time, but I found that her belly or back were too exposed.  So, we went back to cotton sleepers with cotton shirt and pants underneath and tried to keep her covered with a blanket as much as possible.

After months of using cotton sleepers, we decided to try fleece sleepers because we keep our new house cooler.  I’m not sure what it is, but my daughter does not seem to like sleeping in fleece sleepers.  Partly, it’s not a surprise because I don’t feel comfortable sleeping in fleece either.  I need something lighter and more breathable.  So, we might be switching to cotton sleepers again.

As you can see we’ve had to experiment quite a bit.  What works for one baby, doesn’t always work for another.  If you’ve found something that works for you, then you’re one of the lucky ones :-)

Tagged as:  baby clothes · sleepers · sleeping bag