Thermostat setting and sleeping baby

[Scandium]

How much do you heat the house at night with a baby? Our 3 month old has been waking up and fussing at night and some suggested that he is cold (although people seem to say this no matter what..). We keep the house on the cold side (compared to most people. Hot by MMM standards) especially at night. When the baby came home we bumped it to 62-64 or so at night.

Looked around the internet I found most suggested that appropriate thermostat setting for a sleeping baby is 68-72 F! We don't even go above 67 during the day! Neither of us like it hot at night and sleeping in 72 degrees sounds awful. Yes I realize babies can't control their temperature and must be kept warm, but we have him bundled in a onesie, footed "PJs" and a thick swaddle wrap and a hat. We are looking into merino wool sleep sacks now. I turned it up to 68 last night and he did seem to sleep better, but that could just be chance. Need to test more to isolate the variables. This will also of course be murder on the electric bill, but if it's required for the baby...

None of the sites that specify temperature mention anything about how much the baby is wearing. I would think that would be quite important for how hot it needs to be? One layer? Three layers? Wool?

Is a constant 68 degrees really required?

[eil]

We have two kids, the youngest is a 15 month old, so this is all still fresh in my mind. There are probably books covering this topic but today I'm just going to throw out a bunch of random points and observations. Hopefully some of them help.

1) Billions of babies have survived a huge range of temperatures over the course of human history. Somewhere around 70-75F is probably the ideal ambient temperature, but the range of acceptable temperatures is wider than you think.

2) As a parent, your lips are a well tuned baby temperature monitor. When in doubt, kiss his forehead. You will be able to tell intuitively if he is too hot or too cold.

3) All babies are different. Our daughter used to sweat profusely in her sleep no matter what the ambient temperature or how little or much she was bundled up. We just made sure she had plenty to drink before bed and first thing in the morning and she was fine. We had to change her sheets pretty often to keep them from getting funky, though.

4) Babies often don't sleep through the night and this is normal. Sometimes it's temperature, sometimes its gas, sometimes it's general growing pains, sometimes they just want to snuggle with another warm body. Most often it's because they're hungry. They have small tummies and burn through fuel like crazy. Our son is 15 months old and he's only slept through the night 2 or 3 times.

[pzxc]

Take a look at this:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21537988

You have nothing to worry about :)

[hunniebun]

I think there a million reasons why babies wake up...and temperature is one of them! Does he feel cold on the face? While sleeping?  If keeping baby's room warmer seems to led to better sleep....maybe consider just getting a little heater for his/her room...so you are not heating the entire house? 

[Scandium]

Thanks.
Yes I'm sure he'd survive below 68, but last night he slept longer than usual. Until he was hungry of course.. It's not really about what's safe, just what will make him comfortable and sleep longer  I'll inch the setting down and see how it goes. His face has been a bit cold when I check on him, but when he come out of the sleep sack he seems quite warm. If anything I was worried he was too warm for a while (before it dropped <20 at night here..)

A space heater is an option. People say they raise the electric bill, but I can't imagine any more than heating the whole house to 68 all night! I'll have to do the math. My wife are a bit scared of them from a fire/safety perspective but I think I can convince her. As far as I know they are reasonably safe.

I just found the blanked "68-72" advice a bit strange, especially with no allowance for thick clothes.


Ps: i was one of those nordic babies that slept outside in the cold. I think research shows that it's harmless, but also a bit pointless. People there are obsessed with "fresh air", but considering how drafty out crappy 70s constructed house is I think we get plenty of fresh air.
(It's suggested the extreme insulation and tight building requirements in scandianvia can lead to more astma and related issues so maybe it makes some sense there)

[CommonCents]

2) As a parent, your lips are a well tuned baby temperature monitor. When in doubt, kiss his forehead. You will be able to tell intuitively if he is too hot or too cold.

+1
My mom still does this to this day.  We were visiting my parents and my husband wasn't feeling so well, and I wondered if he was getting sick.  My mom said sorry, but this is the only way I can do it, kissed him on the forward and decreed he was a little high, but not too bad.  We were greatly amused.

[megamomo]

With the experience of 4 kids (and a 5th coming), I have been through this experiment.  We keep our house as 65 degrees overnight.  We have a small tower heater with a thermostat to supplement in the baby's room.  I don't know the exact temp but I would guess it is in the 68-72 range mentioned.  This seems to work very well for us.  I definitely would recommend one with a thermostat so you can get a fairly consistent temperature in there.  I think the low setting is 900W and it only runs intermittently even on cold nights.

At 65 degrees, our other kids often complain of being cold, so I translated that to mean the baby may very well be cold also.  Our kids are most comfortable with full-length pajamas, a sheet, and a comforter.  So I figured the sleeper sack is not much thicker than the pajamas, so I need something to keep the baby slightly warmer, hence the small heater.

[NumberCruncher]

A space heater is an option. People say they raise the electric bill, but I can't imagine any more than heating the whole house to 68 all night! I'll have to do the math. My wife are a bit scared of them from a fire/safety perspective but I think I can convince her. As far as I know they are reasonably safe.

Eh...at first I was thinking "as long as you operate it according to manufacturer recommendations (not having anything near it, flat surface, changing filters or other parts as needed)," but just leaving it on when not awake or in the same room seems to be generally classed as a "don't": http://www.cpsc.gov/onsafety/2010/11/space-heater-safety/

It might depend on the type of heater - I'm guessing the fancier ones with thermostats likely have some fail-safe measures that the cheaper ones do not.

Unless you have a very small house, it should be cheaper to heat one room with an electric space heater while keeping the rest of the house at a lower temperature. Just make sure to research the particular brand/model before you buy to make sure it's safe at night, of course, if you go this route.

[mrsggrowsveg]

When my toddler was a little baby and wouldn't use blankets, I would put him in really thick pajamas and put a small space heater in his room with the rest of the house at 60.  As soon as he was old enough for blankets, we were able to skip the space heater and leave the house at 60.

[justajane]

Hotter winter temperatures are a potential SIDS risk, so I would be nervous about using a space heater in a room, since it could raise the temperature precipitously. Not to mention the risk of fire.

We have an 8 month old that sleeps in a cold closet off of our master (it has a window and a light, so we're not terrible parents, I promise), and sometimes I worry about him being cold. He sleeps similarly to your child, but with a sleep sack instead of a swaddle.

I wouldn't worry one bit about a baby in a swaddle being too cold. That type of arrangement is very warm, even with a light swaddle blanket. It's because the extremities are fully covered and tight against his body.

In my case, I worry about his little hands and arms getting cold in his sleep sack.

For the record, we keep our heat at 65 during the night, and we have a pretty drafty and old house.

[greaper007]

We did two sets of PJs and a space heater.   We also co-slept or had our kids in the same room as us.

[GuitarStv]

When our son was born we raised the temperature in the house to 18 C (64 F) for his comfort.  With proper pajamas and a heavy, warm sleep sack he was perfectly fine at these temperatures.

[Kmp2]

We kept our house warmer up until about 3-4 months, more for my comfort then DD. She slept just fine in a sleeper and a fleece sleep sack, but I hated to get out of bed to feed her in the cold. Then we set our thermostat at 60 overnight. I did get her a down sleep sack for summer camping, and winter at our house. It works really well, but was definitely a splurge. Now at 21 months she is back in a sleeper and a fleece sleep sac with blankets, and she knows how to pull them off and on if she needs them - yay!

[mwulff]

I think you're just fine, here in Denmark babies sleep outside in their stroller even in autumn. Of course they are wrapped in blankets, clothes and what-have-we-not. But they are pretty tolerant of temperature.

[MDM]

Our 3 month old has been waking up and fussing at night

Congratulations, it appears you have a normal 3 month old.  "Sleeping like a baby" doesn't mean what non-parents assume it does.

...we have him bundled in a onesie, footed "PJs" and a thick swaddle wrap and a hat.

That seems plenty

And +1 to eil's comments also.

[happy]

There's been a thread on this before.
In Sydney, most people don't heat their houses over night in winter…but the absolute minimum temp is probably 30F. Houses in the past were poorly insulated..I reckon temperatures dropped to 40-50F inside. No-one heated rooms for baby when I was growing up and no-one I knew heated their rooms for the baby, so I didn't. Whilst very small they will generally stay covered and swaddled, but once they start to move around the fun and games starts. At this point I switched to extra warm pjs and a sleeping sack in winter. Once I got the sleeping sack, they never woke up cold.  More problem with very hot nights in heat waves - no aircon.

I understand in many part of US its very cold and some heating is necessary but in my culture what you are describing seems like overkill.  If you were going to drop the temperature I'd do it very gradually over a period of  several weeks.

Also echo those who said, don't make a decision about unsettled baby based on 1 event….needs to be tested a few times, babies behaviour fluctuates from day to day.

[GuitarStv]

Congratulations, it appears you have a normal 3 month old.  "Sleeping like a baby" doesn't mean what non-parents assume it does.

It's more correctly written:  "Sleeping" like a baby.

[rosaz]

Old thread, but I'm curious - OP, what did you decide to do? How has that been working so far?

I'll confess that heating is my chief anti-mustachian weakness, and I keep the house (well, our bedrooms. Luckily we have a thermostat in each room) at 70 at night. The heating bills can get quite high but I made that decision for 2 reasons: a) at 5 y.o. my little one still kicks off the blankets every night, and does seem more prone to head colds when her room at night dips much below 70; and b) even under an epic pile of blankets, I get uncomfortably cold and wake up achey at any temperature below 68.

Needless to say, admitting all that on this forum does make me feel like a complainy-pants, but in my own defense, I never put the AC below 85 or so!

So... long story short, if you haven't already, I would try at the slightly higher temperature and see how your baby does. It might not be that, but it might, and I'd say it's worth finding out. As someone who wears my coat all day in the office, I'm a firm believer that different people do have genuinely different temperature comfort-zones, and your baby's thermostat might just be set differently than yours.

[Little Nell]

When we brought home our son, a preemie (born at 3 lbs 9 oz, came home from the hospital at 4 lbs 10), we started with the thermometer at 72. Way too hot for comfort, but that is what the doctor suggested. Every pound he gained, we lowered temp one degree, until we arrived at our normal heating routine: furnace at about 65 during the day; furnace off at night; house gets down into high fifties. We prefer sleeping under lots of blankets in a cold house, including the son, who is now sixteen and has almost never been sick.

[3okirb]

Hotter winter temperatures are a potential SIDS risk

From talking to a friend who is an EMT, he said that almost every house that he had a SIDS call for was too hot.  Mostly during the summer, but winter as well.  Higher temperatures are linked to SIDS.

[justajane]

Hotter winter temperatures are a potential SIDS risk

From talking to a friend who is an EMT, he said that almost every house that he had a SIDS call for was too hot.  Mostly during the summer, but winter as well.  Higher temperatures are linked to SIDS.

Interesting. I didn't realize that. I've never seen an actual breakdown of when the bulk of SIDS deaths occurs.

All three of our boys have slept in a walk-in closet attached to our bedroom. It has a window, and since our second floor can be stifling in the summer even with the whole house A/C on, we put a window unit in that closet that cooled both the crib area and our bedroom. Now I'm really glad we did that!

[Meggslynn]

With the experience of 4 kids (and a 5th coming), I have been through this experiment.  We keep our house as 65 degrees overnight.  We have a small tower heater with a thermostat to supplement in the baby's room.  I don't know the exact temp but I would guess it is in the 68-72 range mentioned.  This seems to work very well for us.  I definitely would recommend one with a thermostat so you can get a fairly consistent temperature in there.  I think the low setting is 900W and it only runs intermittently even on cold nights.

At 65 degrees, our other kids often complain of being cold, so I translated that to mean the baby may very well be cold also.  Our kids are most comfortable with full-length pajamas, a sheet, and a comforter.  So I figured the sleeper sack is not much thicker than the pajamas, so I need something to keep the baby slightly warmer, hence the small heater.

This exactly .... except the 5 kids thing!