The Only Erstausstattung Winterbaby Guide You Need

It's mid-November, I'm standing in our tiny apartment hallway in maternity leggings that honestly smell vaguely like sour milk, and I'm sweating profusely while drinking lukewarm coffee because my three-week-old son Leo looks exactly like a furious, red-faced marshmallow.

I had just wrestled him into this massive puffy polyester snowsuit that had little bear ears on the hood, which looked adorable on Pinterest but in reality meant he couldn't bend his arms and was screaming like I was torturing him. My husband Dave was hovering by the door holding the diaper bag like a bomb that was about to detonate, quietly suggesting that maybe we didn't actually need to go to the grocery store today after all. I just felt like an absolute failure.

When I was pregnant and frantically googling for an erstausstattung winterbaby list at 3 AM, I fell into this terrible trap of thinking that because I was due in the dead of winter, my baby was going to instantly freeze the second the chilly Swiss air touched his delicate skin. So I bought everything. Heavy jackets. Thick fleeces. Weird rigid pants that wouldn't even fit over a diaper. It was just a disaster, and my baby was literally overheating while I was freezing my own butt off.

The temperature panic and what the doctor actually said

I spent the entire first month of Leo’s life obsessively touching his little hands and feet, which were always basically blocks of ice, and then I'd panic and throw another blanket on him while he slept.

Anyway, we went in for his one-month checkup and my pediatrician, Dr. Weber, who has this very calming grandfather energy, basically gently laughed at me. He explained that newborns have a terrible, immature circulatory system so their hands and feet are completely useless for judging temperature, and that I need to be feeling the back of his neck instead. If the neck is sweaty, he’s baking. If it’s warm and dry, he’s totally fine. Which was completely wild to me because his fingers were like icicles, but the doctor promised me he wasn't freezing.

He told me I should always do the plus-one layer rule, which just means you look at whatever you're wearing to be comfortable and put exactly one extra thin layer on the baby. If I'm in a long-sleeve tee, the baby needs a long-sleeve tee plus a cardigan. It sounds so simple but my sleep-deprived brain was blown.

Zwiebellook and the things I actually use

Dr. Weber also told me to use the onion method, the whole Zwiebelprinzip thing, which basically means layering a bunch of thin breathable things instead of one giant space suit so you can peel the baby like an onion when you go into a heated cafe and then add layers back when you go out into the freezing wind. I guess adults do this too but I usually just wear a massive winter coat over a t-shirt so the concept was pretty foreign to me.

This is when I realized that ninety percent of my baby closet was garbage because it was all chunky, unbreathable synthetic crap. Here's my messy but honest list of what genuinely works for a winter newborn, because seriously, you can skip the bulky stuff.

Wrap bodysuits made of wool and silk: This is literally the most important thing you'll buy. Get like five or six of them. I ended up buying the organic baby clothes from Kianao and specifically their wool-silk blend wrap bodysuit, and oh god, it saved my sanity. You don't have to pull it over their floppy little newborn head, which always made me feel like I was going to accidentally break my baby, and the wool keeps stable their temperature so they don't sweat. Plus it survived a massive coffee-shop blowout where I had to awkwardly wipe him down with cold water in a public bathroom while trying not to cry.
A wool fleece overall: Wool fleece is basically like wearing a cloud, and it fits easily into a stroller bassinet unlike boiled wool (Wollwalk) which I think is a bit too stiff for a brand new baby who just wants to curl up into a little fetal ball. Keep the boiled wool for when they're older and really walking around in the wind.
Thin cotton layers: Four or five long-sleeve shirts and some stretchy pants with wide waistbands so they don't dig into their sensitive little umbilical cord stumps.
Thick wool socks: Because the cold hands and feet thing still freaks me out even if the doctor says it's normal, so I just put massive socks on him anyway.

Car seat safety which honestly scared the hell out of me

Okay, huge rant incoming because I see this all the time at the supermarket and I've to physically bite my tongue to stop myself from saying something to strangers. You can't put a baby in a car seat while they're wearing a puffy winter coat or a thick snowsuit.

A nurse at the hospital explained this to me before we were discharged and it literally gave me nightmares. Basically, when you buckle a baby into a car seat over a puffy coat, the harness feels tight to you, but it's only tight against the fluff. If you get into a crash, the massive force sucks all the air out of the jacket padding in a split second, and suddenly those straps are two or three inches too loose. The baby can literally be ejected from the seat.

If you want to keep them safe and warm in the car, just skip the coats completely and put them in their regular indoor clothes, strap them in super tight against their chest, and then lay a blanket over the top of the belts once they're buckled. It takes two extra seconds and it's the only safe way to do it.

Sleep paranoia and the whole TOG rating mystery

I still don't completely understand the thermodynamics of TOG ratings, it sounds like some sort of scientific measure of how much sleep I'm losing on any given night. But basically the sleep experts and my pediatrician both told me that to lower the risk of SIDS, the bedroom should be surprisingly cold. Like, 16 to 18 degrees Celsius cold.

I was freezing in my own bed wearing flannel pajamas, but for the baby, they just need a good winter sleeping bag that's rated 2.5 or 3.5 TOG over their pajamas. We used one of the heavy Kianao sleep sacks and it was great because he couldn't kick it off.

We also bought their gorgeous thick organic cotton baby blanket which I'm going to be completely honest, I barely used in the crib at all because I was so incredibly paranoid about loose bedding suffocating him. It's beautiful and the texture is amazing, but it mostly ended up just being draped over my own lap on the couch while I nursed or shoved over the top of the stroller when we went for walks. Buy it for the aesthetic and the coziness, just don't put it in the crib with an unattended infant.

If you're still trying to figure out your registry and feeling completely overwhelmed by all the synthetic fabrics out there, you should probably just browse through Kianao's baby care collection and grab the basics because their stuff is really made of natural fibers that won't make your kid break out in a weird rash.

Outdoor walks and the problem with regular lotion

Winter air is absolutely vicious on baby skin. Maya was born three years after Leo, also in the dead of winter, and by then I was slightly less panicked about everything. But I did learn the hard way that putting regular baby lotion on their face before a walk is a terrible idea.

Regular baby lotions have water in them. If you put water-based lotion on your baby's cheeks and then walk into a freezing headwind, it literally freezes on their face. My mom told me that and I thought she was making it up to mess with me, but it makes total sense when you stop to think about it. You need a wind and weather balm that's purely oil and wax based with zero water content. It makes them look a little greasy and shiny, but it protects their skin from getting chapped and bleeding.

Also, pre-warm the stroller bassinet with a cherry pit pillow before you go out. Taking a cozy, warm baby out of your arms and laying them down flat on a freezing cold stroller mattress is a guaranteed way to wake them up screaming.

Anyway, the point is, dressing a winter baby is stressful but you really only need a few high-quality, breathable pieces. Before you go out and buy a bunch of polyester fleece you'll instantly regret, check out Kianao's organic cotton essentials to get started with layers that seriously work in the real world.

Questions I googled at 4 AM

Do winter babies need long sleeves indoors?

Honestly it depends entirely on how much you blast your heating, but my husband Dave likes our apartment to feel like a tropical sauna in December so I mostly just kept Leo in a long-sleeve bodysuit and some thin leggings. Just look at what you're wearing and add one thin layer, so if I was sweating in a t-shirt, he was fine in a single long-sleeve bodysuit.

How do I know if the baby is too cold at night?

Again with the neck test! I'd literally sneak into his room like a ninja at 2 AM, gently stick two fingers down the back of his sleep sack, and feel his neck. If he felt warm, I walked away and went back to sleep. Just ignore their hands because their hands are liars.

Are tights necessary for newborn boys or girls?

Oh god, putting tights on a flailing newborn is like trying to shove wet spaghetti into a straw. I absolutely hated tights and refused to buy them after the first week.

Do I need to wash the winter coats before wearing them?

Yeah, everything. Even the outerwear and the hats. My pediatrician was super strict about this because apparently the chemicals from the textile manufacturing process can trigger crazy contact dermatitis on fresh baby skin. Just wash it all before they wear it, but definitely skip the fabric softener because that heavily perfumed crap is even worse for their sensitive skin.

What's the deal with babywearing in winter?

If you're strapping the baby to your chest under your own massive maternity coat or a specific babywearing jacket, they absolutely don't need a snowsuit. Your body heat is literally a furnace. If I put Maya in a thick fleece suit and then strapped her to me, we both would have melted into a puddle on the sidewalk. Just stick to their indoor clothes, a really warm knit hat, and some thick wool booties to cover the little feet that dangle out.