Why I Ditched Fleece for Baby Wolle in the Freezing Chicago Winter

Priya
2026-03-23T07:13:01+01:00

It was two in the morning in mid-February. The kind of Chicago night where the wind off Lake Michigan sounds like a structural failure. I reached into the crib and unzipped my son's heavy fleece sleep sack. His chest was damp. The back of his neck felt like a wet sponge left in a refrigerator.

He was sweating, but he was freezing.

I've worked in pediatric triage. I've seen a thousand varying degrees of infant distress. But standing in my own dark nursery, holding a clammy baby, my clinical training basically evaporated. All I knew was that synthetic fabrics were betraying me.

Listen, when you've a newborn, everyone buys you fleece. It feels soft in the store. It looks cozy. It's actually a plastic bag masquerading as a blanket.

The plastic bag problem

I spent my first three months of motherhood dressing my kid in miniature polyester saunas. I thought I was keeping him warm. We lived in a drafty apartment and I was terrified of him getting a chill.

My doctor, Dr. Gupta, took one look at my son's flushed cheeks during a wellness check and sighed. She told me babies are terrible at regulating their own body temperature. Their internal thermostats are essentially broken until they get older.

When you wrap a baby in polyester fleece, their body heat gets trapped. They start sweating to cool down. But the synthetic fabric doesn't let the moisture escape. So the sweat just sits on their skin, turning cold the second a draft hits them.

It's a recipe for midnight wake-ups. More importantly, it's a SIDS risk. Dr. Gupta casually reminded me that overheating is a massive red flag for infant sleep safety. You want them warm, but you want them dry.

She mentioned I should look into natural fibers. Specifically, she mumbled something about European wool.

The imported textile rabbit hole

I spent the next three night feeds deep in international parenting forums. This is where I discovered the cult of baby wool.

The European parents treat this stuff like it's spun gold. I was deeply skeptical. My only reference point for wool was the heavy, scratchy sweaters my grandmother used to knit, the ones that made my neck break out in hives within five minutes of wearing them.

But the yarn they use for these infant clothes is different. It's superfine merino. The fibers are supposedly so thin they bend when they touch the skin instead of poking it.

According to the forums, this material breathes. Dr. Gupta had said wool acts like a second skin because babies have those broken internal thermostats, so it basically does the sweating for them. It absorbs moisture vapor next to the skin and just vents it out into the room.

I decided to buy a sleep sack. Then I saw the price.

The budget crisis and the deadstock loophole

One hundred and fifty dollars for a baby sleeping bag. For a garment he would inevitably outgrow or destroy with a blowout in six months.

I closed my laptop. I love my kid, but I'm not remortgaging my house for a sleep sack.

But I couldn't let it go. I kept digging through translated German websites. That's when I stumbled onto the term baby wolle restposten.

Restposten is basically a term for remnants. Deadstock. End-of-the-line production scraps. High-end textile mills overproduce this premium merino yarn, and instead of throwing it in a landfill, some sustainable brands buy it up at a discount to make limited-run clothing.

It's the only way this whole system makes sense to me.

The fashion industry produces a sickening amount of waste. Mills dye ten thousand yards of yarn, a brand only uses eight thousand, and the rest just sits there. Buying clothes made from these remnants means you're intercepting perfectly good premium material before it becomes literal garbage.

Plus, it cuts the retail price down to something a normal parent can actually stomach.

I started hunting for clearance wool. I bought a second-hand boiled wool jacket. I found some discounted leggings made from deadstock yarn. My kid started looking like a tiny, very cozy Swiss mountaineer.

Speaking of keeping things sustainable and close to the skin, we layered these wool finds over soft basics. The Sleeveless Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit became our go-to base layer. You just snap it on under the heavy knits, letting the organic cotton handle the immediate friction while the merino handles the temperature control on top. It's soft, it survives the washing machine, and it doesn't have those terrible scratchy tags. Explore the organic clothing collection if you want to see what a decent base layer actually looks like.

The onion strategy

The Germans call it the zwiebellook. The onion method.

You can't just shove a kid in a massive wool snowsuit and call it a day. You have to layer them, so you can peel them like an onion when you go from the freezing street into a violently overheated Chicago grocery store.

Here's how I genuinely dress my toddler when the temperature drops below freezing.

A fitted organic cotton or silk-wool blend bodysuit goes on first.

A thin merino long-sleeve shirt and leggings go on next.

A boiled wool overall goes on top.

It looks thin. It feels entirely wrong to midwestern sensibilities. Every time we leave the house, my mother-in-law asks where his heavy coat is, convinced I'm freezing my beta to death.

But when we get back inside, I check the back of his neck. It's warm. It's completely dry. He's comfortable.

The teething overlap

Of course, right as I finally nailed his winter wardrobe, the teeth arrived.

Suddenly, my carefully curated, breathable layers were soaked in drool. He chewed on his cuffs. He chewed on the collar of his sleep sack. He tried to eat his boiled wool mittens.

Merino is amazing, but it smells terrible when it's soaked in warm baby saliva.

I had to give him something else to chew on before he digested a hundred dollars' worth of knitwear. When we were stuck inside because it was six degrees out, we'd sit on the rug. I'd try to stack the Gentle Baby Building Blocks while he supervised. They're soft rubber, which means when he inevitably knocked the tower over onto his own face, nobody cried. They don't have that awful chemical smell most plastic toys have right out of the box.

But for the actual teething pain, I handed him the Llama Teether. Listen, I've seen a lot of teething toys on the nursing floor, but this one honestly works. The silicone is soft enough that it doesn't bruise his swollen gums, but firm enough to offer real resistance. The little heart cutout makes it easy for his clumsy hands to hold. I just throw it in the dishwasher when it gets gross. It honestly saved my sanity and my sweaters.

I also bought the Cow Silicone Teether from the same lineup. It's fine. The texture is decent, but my son just prefers the shape of the llama. It's a bit bulky for his specific grip. You really only need one good teether, maybe two if you tend to lose things in the couch cushions.

The dirty secret about washing

This is the part that usually breaks people's brains.

You rarely wash wool.

I know. We're programmed to sanitize everything that comes near an infant. The idea of putting a kid in a garment that hasn't been blasted with hot water and strong detergent feels negligent.

But sheep produce lanolin. It's a natural wax that coats the fibers. It's mildly antimicrobial and naturally repels water and dirt.

When my son gets a little spit-up on his pullover, I just wipe it off with a damp cloth and hang the sweater near an open window. By morning, it doesn't smell. It's basically self-cleaning.

I think I washed his main winter jacket exactly once last year.

When you do have to wash it, you've to be paranoid. Cold water only. Special detergent. No wringing. You have to lay it flat on a towel and gently roll it up to press the water out, then lay it flat somewhere else to dry.

If you put it in the dryer, you'll pull out a garment perfectly sized for a squirrel. Don't ask me how I know. Just don't do it.

A brief surrender to biology

Parenting is mostly just a series of realizing you don't know anything, learning a very specific skill, and then moving on to the next crisis.

I spent an entire winter obsessed with textile properties. I learned more about moisture wicking and micron counts than I ever wanted to.

But it fixed the sleep issue. He stopped waking up clammy. I stopped panicking about his temperature.

Sometimes the old, boring solutions really are the best ones. Natural fibers aren't a trend. It's just biology doing what it's supposed to do.

If you're exhausted from trying to figure out why your kid is fussy at night, check their neck, ditch the plastic fleece, and look for the remnants. Let the sheep do the heavy lifting.

Browse our organic and natural fiber essentials here before the next cold front hits.

Unsolicited answers to your wool questions

How do I know if my kid is too hot in their layers?
Forget their hands and feet. Infant extremities are always freezing because their circulatory system is still figuring itself out. Shove your hand down the back of their shirt. If the nape of their neck feels sweaty or hot to the touch, peel a layer off. Natural fibers breathe well, but you can still overdo it if you put a heavy knit over a thick sweater in a heated room.

Is merino really safe for babies with eczema?
My doctor said yes, but with a massive caveat. It has to be superfine yarn. Cheap, thick knits will tear their skin up. But high-quality, fine fibers honestly trap a little microclimate of humidity next to the skin, which can keep eczema patches from drying out and cracking. If you're nervous, just put an organic cotton layer underneath so the rougher stuff never directly touches the angry skin.

What exactly is this restposten stuff you mentioned?
It's just the German word for leftover stock. A lot of the best textile mills are in Europe. When they make too much yarn, smaller brands buy the scraps at a discount to make limited runs of clothing. It keeps perfectly good material out of the trash and usually drops the price tag. It's basically high-end thrift shopping without the thrift store smell.

Why does my baby's jacket smell weird when it rains?
Because it came from an animal, yaar. When untreated yarn gets wet, the natural lanolin smells slightly like a wet farm. It means the jacket is honestly doing its job and repelling the water. The smell fades completely as soon as it dries. Just hang it up in a well-ventilated room.

Can I just use regular laundry soap on it?
Absolutely not. Regular detergent contains enzymes designed to break down proteins. Guess what animal hair is made of. Protein. Standard detergent will literally eat the fibers and leave your expensive sleep sack full of tiny holes. You have to buy a specific wash that preserves the lanolin. It's annoying, but a bottle lasts forever because you wash these things so rarely.