The dreadful season for our babies is here, especially if it’s their first winter. Being a finicky mom, I was very particular about my baby’s exposure to the weather during winters and I’ll share some tips from my experiences which you could put to use during your baby’s first winter, which will also help to make their immunity stronger in the longer run.
First of all, make sure you don’t overtly protect your baby from the natural environment for too long, which means he needs to breathe in fresh air to build immunity. For example, during extreme winter’s and summers, do not limit your baby’s exposure to within-room-only with room heater during winters or air conditioned rooms during summers. This is unless your entire house is fully air conditioned or centrally heated, in which case, the baby would be protected against sudden change in room temperature when he moves around the house.
Here, I would also like to talk about a popular trend these days, which is, using air purifiers for new born babies. While the intention is to give them the best but it ends up lowering your baby’s immunity levels. These babies becomes so accustomed to breathing in artificially purified air, they tend to catch infections as soon as they are exposed to the outside environment. It may be alright to use air purifiers once they are older and their body has been exposed on a regular basis to the actual environment and breathing purified air inside the house would not drastically affect their immunity levels
Next, I would like to talk about appropriate dressing for your baby during winters. Firstly, care must be taken to not overdress the baby with too many layers of clothes and caps and gloves. The thumb rule is that number of layers of clothing to the baby is one more than what you are wearing yourself. Which means, if you are wearing only one cardigan over your shirt, do not add more than 2 warm layers over your baby’s dress.
Another watchout, esp for a newborn, is to not cover your baby from head to toe during non-winter season. Either head or toes should be kept bare for the body heat to get liberated. During winters, covering heads and toes is unavoidable but make sure inside the house, head isn’t covered all the time.
That’s all I have to share from my experiences. Rest, my only advice to you is to trust your instincts as a mom because a mother alone can best understand her baby's needs and moods.
So, Over to you, Moms !
