Baby pillow: five tips for choosing and caring for baby pillows

Pil­low for the baby: when is it need­ed, what kind of pil­low should you buy and how to prop­er­ly care for it? Five key tips for choos­ing safe and com­fort­able pil­lows for spinal health and rest­ful sleep.

First, there is a time for everything.

Russ­ian sci­en­tists have found that 40% of young par­ents vio­late the basic rule of chil­dren’s sleep and use pil­lows! A pil­low for a new­born and a baby is not need­ed, and this is the most impor­tant thing to remem­ber. At least up to a year and a half, and prefer­ably up to two, you need to restrain your­self and not buy pil­lows for your child.

Chil­dren have dif­fer­ent body pro­por­tions than adults: the head is much larg­er and the neck is weak­er. Sup­port­ing the neck in the form of a pil­low for the baby will only hurt: the cer­vi­cal region will not form prop­er­ly and will bend. And in some cas­es, the pil­low will inter­fere with the child’s breath­ing until breath­ing stops.

The only excep­tion is if there are med­ical indi­ca­tions. With patholo­gies of the cer­vi­cal region, uneven tone, the doc­tor may rec­om­mend a chil­dren’s ortho­pe­dic pil­low in the form of a cres­cent or a ring. But only for fix­ing the head!

No mat­ter how much you want to dec­o­rate the chil­dren’s bed with a pil­low or put some­thing soft under the del­i­cate head (one of the par­ents’ fears about the fontanel is that it must be pro­tect­ed with pil­lows), post­pone this pur­chase for up to two years in the name of the child’s health!

Choosing the first pillow for the baby: thickness

Babies have larg­er heads than adults, short­er necks, and nar­row­er shoul­ders. There­fore, the first pil­low for the baby is not the same as “adults”. It is much thin­ner, and right­ly so.

• Up to three years, the thick­ness of the pil­low should be no more than three cm.
• From three to five years — no more than five cm.
• From five to sev­en years — up to 10 cm.

Well, if a baby up to three years old sleeps on his stom­ach or back, then a pil­low is not need­ed at all.

How many pillows should there be?

There should be only one pil­low in the baby’s bed — all the rest can cause breath­ing prob­lems in chil­dren under three years old, and then cause patholo­gies of the spinal col­umn due to improp­er sleep­ing pos­ture.

In addi­tion, experts advise rec­tan­gu­lar pil­lows, such that only the head and not the shoul­ders of the child fit on them.

Study the composition

• The pil­low cov­er for the baby should be made of nat­ur­al cot­ton, and not very dense. Choose options from coarse cal­i­co, per­cale, satin. It is good if the cov­er is treat­ed with dust mites (this is indi­cat­ed on the label).
• The filler should be hypoal­ler­genic: give up fluff and feath­ers (dust mites often start in them), wool up to 4–5 years (may be aller­gic). The best options are fillers made of silk, arti­fi­cial latex, arti­fi­cial fluff or mate­ri­als with mem­o­ry effect (from 3–4 years).
• Ortho­pe­dic baby pil­lows (wavy or in the form of rollers) with­out a doc­tor’s pre­scrip­tion can only be used from the age of four. And it is bet­ter to con­sult a doc­tor before buy­ing.

Take good care of your baby’s pillow!

Do not put the child to bed if the hair is wet after bathing — this increas­es the humid­i­ty of the filler, microor­gan­isms begin to mul­ti­ply in it. Dry the pil­lows reg­u­lar­ly, if the child sweats often, pur­chase an addi­tion­al replace­ment cov­er.

If the pil­low began to smell, became thin­ner than when pur­chased, the col­or of the filler changed, black dots, lumps, bumps appeared — it needs to be replaced.

Baby pil­lows need to be washed or dry-cleaned at least once every two months. It is nec­es­sary to ven­ti­late every week on a flat sur­face.