Dear Tom: Buy a fußsack für babys before the winter sleet hits

Dear November Tom,

You're currently standing outside the off-licence on a Tuesday afternoon. The sleet is doing that highly specific, horizontal London thing where it somehow manages to rain entirely upward. Both girls have just simultaneously scissor-kicked their hand-knitted cellular blankets directly into a puddle of what I desperately hope is just brown rainwater. You're trying to wedge a squirming toddler back into the double buggy while holding a damp, smelling-faintly-of-wet-dog wool square, trying to maintain some shred of dignity while your hands literally freeze into claws.

Stop what you're doing. Pick up the muddy blankets, throw them in the under-pram basket (where they'll sit, forgotten and moulding, until March), and admit defeat. The era of the loose blanket is over.

I'm writing to you from the other side of winter. We survived, but only because I finally realised that trying to keep a stationary baby warm in a moving pushchair using a loose square of fabric is a fool's errand. You need a proper winter footmuff—essentially a heavy-duty, zip-up sleeping bag that straps directly into the buggy. I know you think they look like excessive camping gear for people who can't walk, but please, for your own sanity, listen to me.

Please step away from the puffy coats

Let’s talk about the car seat situation first, because this is where things get genuinely a bit terrifying. You recently bought them both those adorable, excessively thick puffer jackets that make them look like tiny, angry Michelin men. You think you're doing a great job.

Our health visitor, a terrifyingly competent woman named Brenda who brooks no nonsense, came over for their standard check-up a few weeks from where you're now. She saw the puffy coats sitting by the car seat and casually mentioned that buckling a baby into a car seat while they're wearing a massive winter coat is essentially a death trap. I politely laughed, assuming she was exaggerating for effect. She wasn't.

She made me strap Twin A into the seat with the coat on, pull the harness tight, and then take her out, remove the coat, and put her back in without adjusting the straps. There was nearly four inches of slack. In a crash, the puffy material compresses instantly, meaning the baby is essentially just wearing a loose plastic hoop and will just fly right out of the seat.

Brenda informed me, in the same tone one might use to explain subtraction to a golden retriever, that you need a car-seat-approved footmuff. You dress them in their normal indoor clothes, strap the harness snugly against their actual chest, and then zip the thick, warm layer over the top of the straps. It seems absurdly simple in retrospect, but it thoroughly rocked my worldview.

I ended up buying the Recycled Fleece Car Seat Muff from Kianao for the car. It’s… fine. It does exactly what it says on the tin. The recycled PET fleece dries incredibly quickly when one of them inevitably spits up milk all over the top zip, and it keeps them safe in the car. But honestly, it feels a bit utilitarian. It’s the Ford Fiesta of baby warmth—reliable, entirely unsexy, but gets you from A to B without anyone freezing to death.

Sheep are apparently thermodynamic geniuses

The real revelation, however, was upgrading the main stroller setup. You know how Twin A runs hot like a tiny, perpetually damp furnace, while Twin B starts shivering if someone opens a fridge in the next postcode? This makes dressing them for a walk a logistical nightmare.

I vaguely remembered reading somewhere that natural fibres are better for temperature regulation, which I always assumed was just marketing jargon designed to separate exhausted parents from their money. But desperation makes you do crazy things, so I started looking into the natural winter outdoor gear.

I ended up getting the Premium Mulesing-Free Lambskin Footmuff, and I'm entirely unashamed to say I'm actively jealous of my own children when I put them in it. It's absurdly soft.

But here's the truly bizarre part: they don't sweat in it. I don't really understand the science—I barely scraped a C in GCSE Biology—but someone explained to me that real sheepskin has tiny air pockets in the wool that trap heat when it's freezing, but somehow also allow air to circulate so moisture evaporates. I think it also has lanolin in it, which I previously thought was just something my wife put on her cracked nipples, but is apparently a magical self-cleaning sheep grease.

Here's what happens when you use it:

• The yogurt incident: Twin B dropped an entire pouch of strawberry yogurt inside it. I panicked, assuming the £150 fluffy cocoon was ruined forever. I wiped it with a damp cloth, and the wool literally just repelled it. I didn't even have to wash it.
• The temperature miracle: We walked from freezing sleet into a brutally overheated Costa Coffee. Normally, this requires a frantic five-minute un-layering process while holding up the queue. With this thing, I just unzipped the front panel entirely, leaving them sitting on the sheepskin backer, which magically stopped them from overheating while I waited 15 minutes for a flat white.
• The silent nap: They actually sleep in the buggy now. Not the jerky, 10-minute exhaustion naps, but deep, two-hour comas, because they feel like they're being aggressively cuddled by a cloud.

The dreaded neck test

You’re probably going to overdress them anyway, because as parents, our primary instinct is to assume our children are always on the brink of hypothermia. Before you layer a massive wool jumper, a snowsuit, and a heavy organic cotton beanie under a thick winter footmuff, please remember that babies are basically terrible thermostats.

They can't control their own body heat well, and overheating is genuinely dangerous. The aforementioned terrifying Brenda taught me the "Nackentest." Forget feeling their hands or feet—babies have rubbish circulation, so their hands always feel like little blocks of ice even when they're practically boiling alive.

You have to shove two fingers right down the back of their neck, just below the collar. If it feels warm and dry, you’re golden. If it’s damp, sweaty, or hot to the touch, you need to start stripping layers off immediately, even if it’s snowing. I spent the entirety of last February walking around London periodically plunging my freezing hands down my children’s shirts like some sort of crazed pickpocket, but it worked.

Muddy boots and the illusion of cleanliness

Right now, your girls are barely walking. They mostly just sit in the buggy, looking slightly confused by the world. But trust me, November Tom, by January, they're going to demand to walk.

They will walk exactly four steps, inevitably locate the deepest, sludgiest puddle of mud and dog mess in the park, stomp in it, and immediately demand to be put back in the pristine buggy because they're tired.

This is where the design of your winter gear becomes critical. Don't, under any circumstances, buy a footmuff that's completely sealed at the bottom. You need one with a two-way zipper or an unlined bottom section. When they get muddy, you just unzip the bottom completely and let their filthy little Wellington boots hang out over the plastic footrest of the stroller.

Yeah, their shins might get a slight breeze, but it's infinitely preferable to spending your evenings trying to scrub dried mud out of white lambskin with a toothbrush while questioning all your life choices.

A final word of advice

You're going to spend a lot of money on baby things that turn out to be completely useless. (I'm looking directly at the wipe-warmer currently gathering dust on the changing table). But a proper, well-made stroller cocoon is not one of them.

It's the difference between being trapped in your house from November to March and actually being able to leave the flat, get a coffee, and interact with the adult world without your children screaming in damp, freezing misery.

Just buy it. Put it on the credit card if you've to. And throw those knitted blankets in the bin.

Yours in exhaustion,
March Tom

P.S. If you're ready to stop fighting with loose blankets, check out Kianao’s full range of stroller accessories and winter gear before the next cold snap hits.

The messy realities of winter strolling (FAQs)

Do I really need to take their winter coat off in the buggy?

Honestly? Yes, if they're in a high-tog winter footmuff. If you put a baby in a snowsuit and then zip them into a fleece or lambskin cocoon, they're going to roast. Treat the buggy sack like a replacement for their coat. Put them in normal indoor clothes (maybe a light jumper), pop a hat on their head, and let the stroller bag do the heavy lifting.

Are the natural lambskin ones actually better, or just posher?

I thought it was just a status symbol for parents who drink oat flat whites, but I was wrong. The synthetic fleece is fine and washes easily, but the natural wool genuinely controls their temperature better. Twin A used to wake up furious and sweaty in her cheap polyester suit; in the wool one, she stays completely dry. Plus, it’s naturally antibacterial, which is great because toddlers are fundamentally gross.

How the hell do I clean these things?

If you get the synthetic ones, you can usually just chuck them in the washing machine on a standard 30-degree cycle and they dry in an hour. If you invest in down or sheepskin, you've to be more careful. With our sheepskin one, I mostly just let the mud dry and brush it out. If there's a serious incident (like a nappy blowout), I use a specific wool detergent on a cold wash. Never put it on a radiator to dry unless you want it to shrink into a crunchy square of cardboard.

Will it fit my incredibly specific brand of buggy?

Most of the good ones are universally designed now. Look for the ones with long, vertical velcro slots in the back rather than just small buttonholes. You just thread the 5-point harness straps right through the back of the material. It takes about five minutes of swearing to thread them through the first time, but then you just leave it attached to the buggy all winter.

What do I do when it rains?

A good footmuff will have a water-repellent outer shell that can handle a light drizzle or a bit of snow. However, if you're caught in a torrential British downpour, you still need to throw the plastic rain cover over the whole buggy. The material is water-resistant, not a wetsuit.