Kiddipedia
Media kindly brought to you by Tommee Tippee the Original Grobag
Choosing sleepwear for your newborn or toddler can seem like a daunting task for new parents at the best of times, and especially as we enter the cooler months. With attention turning to keeping your little one cosy but not overheated, now is the perfect time to canvass some key factors in the selection of sleepwear that will encourage a peaceful slumber. Hint, it’s not purely about insulation when minimising those middle-of-the-night disturbances!
Parents go to great lengths to cultivate a safe, relaxing environment where your little one can sleep soundly, whether it’s adjusting lighting, room temperature or bedding, but you might be surprised to the degree in which sleepwear impacts this endeavour. Look beyond the cute design motifs, and you’ll discover that not all baby apparel is created equal.
In addition to the benefit for your baby, investing in the optimum sleepwear will also mean more sleep for you and an easier nighttime experience. It’s estimated that new parents lose 44 days of sleep in the first year alone! Our friends at Tommee Tippee are on a mission to ease the load for parents and have released an exciting new Autumn/Winter collection featuring bamboo fabrication, a patented Aloe Vera based lining ALOEKINDÔ, plus new colours and designs.
Kiddipedia has canvassed some essential considerations for picking high-quality sleepwear for your baby and explores how the Tommee Tippee sleepwear range can assist parents.
Keep them at the optimum temperature
As we approach the winter season, parents are understandably concerned about keeping their baby warm at night, especially when considering that babies can lose heat rapidly – in fact, nearly 4 times faster than an adult. As you may be aware, newborns and toddlers are still developing the ability to regulate their core body temperature and the right sleepwear can help compensate for this.
In a bid to keep them warm, there is also the danger of overdoing it. Did you know that a child’s growing body to maintain a core body temperature than an adult? Furthermore, children do not perspire as much as adults, which allows evaporation of fluids to keep us cool. Overheating is a significant contributor to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), so the stakes are high when picking the right sleepwear for your baby.
Tommee Tippee understands this concern from parents all too well. Their range of sleep bags help little ones regulate their temperature while sleeping in a few ways – most noticeably, by ensuring there are no loose blankets for them to kick off. Furthermore, their entire sleepwear range uses the Thermal Overall Grade (TOG) grade as a basis for all its garments, including the Autumn/Winter range, with TOGs of 2.5 and 3.5 suitable for use at this time of the year. These fail-safes mean more sleep for baby, and for you, as you gain peace of mind that they are comfortably warm.
Please refer to Tommee Tippee’s ‘What to Wear’ guide to ensure you dress your baby in the most suitable clothing as part of their sleepbag range.
Adherence to safety standards
How do you know the sleepwear you are about to purchase for your baby is actually safe? Now is not the time for guesswork, and safety standards are the crucial starting point for parents. Covering the minimum expectations for baby and toddler sleepwear, the Australian and New Zealand safety standards (AS/NZS 1249:2014) involves the following measures:
- All nightwear for children must be classified into one of four categories, according to the garment or fabric type.
- Labelling is required for each category, with categories 1–3 requiring a low fire hazard label and category 4 requiring a high fire hazard warning label.
- Testing of apparel is mandated to ensure it meets the fire hazard standards, and suppliers must organise this testing through specialist laboratories to verify the claims.
No sleep bag is safer than the Tommee Tippee. Their products are safety tested and approved, and comply fully with AS/NZS 1249:2014.
Soothing, soft-to-the-touch fabrics
There is no understating the importance of natural, breathable fabrics in children’s apparel rather than synthetics, which fail to accommodate infants’ temperature control needs and potentially expose them to trace levels of chemicals in the manufacturing process.
Whereas adults can tolerate many different fabrics without a fuss, an infant’s skin is five times thinner, so it’s no wonder they are more sensitive to the friction created by unsuitable fabrics. For this reason and many more (including durability and anti-staining properties) cotton has become a mainstay for baby clothing.
For that added level of comfort and cosiness, the best baby apparel will also source the purest and softest fibres available. Tommee Tippee’s new sleepwear includes items enriched with bamboo to provide the most supple surface for your baby’s skin. In line with their goal of providing the best possible chance of a blissful night’s sleep, selected garments in their Autumn/Winter collection also feature their signature ALOEKIND™ lining; a unique cotton blend infused with naturally soothing Aloe Vera which is kind to sensitive skin.
Leaving no stone unturned in their commitment to safety, Tommee Tippee has even obtained an ‘OEKO-TEX® 100 class 1 certification’, which is among the world’s best-known labels for textiles tested for harmful substances and deemed harmless to human health. It means the fabrics used in their apparel are guaranteed to be free of harmful chemicals, toxins and irritants. This Winter, why not pick up the 2.5 Tog and/or 3.5 Tog Snuggle Grobag, which contain 100% recycled wadding and have obtained the OEKO-TEX® classification.
Designs that move with your baby
No parent wants to risk stunting a baby’s physical development, and although apparel might seem fairly harmless in this respect, sleepwear that heavily constricts movement in the lower limbs can be a problem. Hip dysplasia is a musculoskeletal condition that is diagnosed in eight Australian babies every day according to Healthy Hips Australia, and while not all cases are avoidable, prevailing advice is to encourage adequate movement in sleepwear as .
When it comes to fitting sleepwear, it’s important that the legs aren’t pulled straight down and left to stay in that position. You want to encourage those little ‘frog legs’, by ensuring freedom for your baby to move them upwards and out to the side. This need for liberal leg movement can make new mums and dads anxious about what sleepwear designs are actually safe, including the use of wraps and swaddling.
Swaddling is proven to improve the quality of sleep in newborns, because it mimics the closeness of the womb and suppresses the startle reflex, to help baby and parents get more sleep. When embracing the swaddle, the key is to look for a hip healthy design that is industry-backed. Tommee Tippee’s sleepwear entire range, and specifically its popular swaddles, are designed to allow a natural hip-healthy leg position, with hip healthy accreditation that is approved by the International Hip Dysplasia Institute.
Convenience for parents
Any parent will recall those weary moments in the early hours of the morning, trying to swiftly pull off a nappy change while ravaged by a lack of sleep, fumbling as you redress your baby, and wishing there was an easier way. Thankfully, there are solutions for the modern parent, to alleviate this all-too-familiar situation, and recover the sleep you deserve!
Whether you’re prepping your newborn or toddler for nap time or night-time slumber, Tommee Tippee’s range of sleepwear offers relief and convenience for parents in their easy nappy change designs. We love the easy two-way zip opening that’s perfect for night-time nappy changes, meaning you can keep baby cosy and warm at the top, but can unzip from the bottom for a quick change, keeping disturbance to a minimum.
The new Autumn/Winter range includes Swaddles, Snuggles, Sleepbags and Steppees for newborns all the way through to 36 months, and come in new designs and colours that include: Earth Green, Botanical, Treasure Trees and Moon Child. Cap it off with their ALOEKIND lining and bamboo fabrication on selected items, and you can feel reassured that your baby’s sleepwear has both style and substance.
Tommee Tippee has become synonymous with undisturbed sleep, confident in their claim that 85% of babies sleep better* in Tommee Tippee sleep bags. Testament to their Grobag being considered a game-changer for many parents, an August 2018 Facebook survey of 320 respondents, revealed that 85% of parents agreed their baby slept better in a Tommee Tippee Grobag than in other bedding.
Tommee Tippee’s sleepwear range exists for the love of sleep, and their motto is better sleep, guaranteed. Visit the Tommee Tippee website to learn more about their exciting product range, or check out their Facebook page for more details on the new collection.
Photo by Flávia Gava on Unsplash
