Keeping Premature Babies Warm At Home: Tips From Experienced Moms

You are not alone. 20M+ preemie babies born in this world each year. Premature babies find it difficult to warm themselves. This problem leads to other problems like these babies will have less energy for eating. This ultimately hampers the growth of the babies as well.

When the doctor releases your baby from the hospital, you have to ensure the necessary warmth for the baby. Definitely, the doctor or the nurses will give you all the advice and you have to follow them.

In this article, I will be talking out of my own experience. Yes, I have talked to some moms who have gone through the same experiences.

How To Keep Premature Babies Warm At Home?

As a parent, you will always know whether your baby is feeling enough warm or not. It’s a gift of being a parent. When the preemie is feeling cold or it is too hot, your little one will become fussy and won’t eat enough. So, what should you do?

You need to have confidence first. When a baby is released from the hospital, it means it can breathe, maintain body temperature, and can breastfeed directly.  However, you can do some extra activities to keep your preemie warm enough.

1. Sleeping Arrangement For Feeding

Always try to make sure your baby finds it easy when it comes to breastfeeding. Since most of the time your baby will be sleeping – you need to arrange co-sleeping but a safe sleeping environment where you can easily feed your baby. There are many safe bassinets for a preemie that you can buy for this purpose.

Make sure your bassinet has adjustable height and you can feed your baby in the bassinet from your bed. Again, these bassinets are not hard to find. Your baby can hold her body temperature only when she is properly fed.

2. Keep Close

Whether you are the mother or the father, skin to skin touch with your baby is a great way to keep your preemie warm. This is what you should do. Undress your baby completely and you should not have any clothes above your waist. No bra as well.

Now, cover yourself along with the baby with a blanket while you are in skin-to-skin touch with the baby. This will make the baby warm quickly and ultimately help the baby eat too.

Warning: In this method, you have to be really careful with the blanket. You have to stay awake while the baby is sleeping. The blanket may cause SIDS or strangulation. If you think you may fall asleep, do not use the blanket.

Instead of a blanket, let the baby wears blanket sleeper or footed pajamas.

3. Dress In Layers

When you have a preemie baby at your home, you may feel let down reading all these fancy articles on baby care. Because you will notice nothing match with your own experience.

But still, you can find some cool tips out there like I have learned this hack online. You should dress your baby in layers. Buy that I mean dress your baby in a vest, zip-up sleeping bag, and a sleep suit.

Depending on the temperature of your home, you add or remove some layers to keep the temperature comfortable for the baby. Remember, too cold or too hot is equally bad for the preemie.

If you are confused about determining what is the right temperature, ask your doctor or the nurses.

4. Washing The Baby At Home

How often you should give baths to your baby depends on the skin your baby & how premature she is. Ask the doctor. But for the first few months, every mother should use only plain water whether it is a preemie or term baby.

You should not use anything other than plain water and soft cotton wool. Your baby will become cold fast whenever the skin is wet. When the bath time is done, wrap your baby with a soft towel quickly to stop losing body heat.

5. Other Easy To Follow Tips

By doing the above two will do the job keeping your baby warm. However, there are other tips that you should know. These tips will help to keep the baby warm when you are not around.

• Believe it or not, your baby loses temperature 4 times faster than you. And they lost most of their temperature from their heads. To stop the temperature losing, try to put a hat on her head whenever it is possible.
• Never let the baby sleeps near the open window or directly under the fan.
• Check the body temperature of the baby whenever you think it is necessary.
• Preemie babies find it difficult to breathe. Smoking nearby her will make it even more difficult. Don’t let anyone smoke nearby your baby or never take your baby to any places where she might get exposed to smoke.
• Make the nursery sleep heaven for the baby. Buying a standard size crib won’t be helpful in this stage. Rather buy a co-sleeper. It should be always clean and you must ensure proper hygiene all the time.

Conclusion

As you can see, you do not need any costly and special equipment to keep your baby warm at home. As the parent, it’s your responsibility to keep the baby warm and comfortable enough to thrive. Following those above-mentioned tips will make your duty simpler.

Now do me a favor sharing this article with your friend circle. Doing so will help other parents with preemie baby keeping their little one warm as well.