Newborn hypothermia (when a baby's body temperature drops too low) is a serious threat to survival in the first month of life, especially in resource-limited settings. A team from Tanzania's Kilimanjaro College of Health and Allied Sciences wanted to understand what new mothers actually do in hospital wards to prevent this problem—not what textbooks say they should do, but what real mothers practise day-to-day.
Between April and June 2024, researchers spoke in depth with 12 mothers in the Kilimanjaro region who had just given birth. They asked open-ended questions about how they kept their newborns warm and listened carefully to their answers.
Mothers layer clothing and warm the room together
The most common approach mothers reported was dressing babies in multiple layers of cotton clothing and preparing these clothes before delivery so they were ready immediately. At the same time, mothers focused on room temperature—keeping indoor heating on or using indoor lighting to warm the space. One simple practice stood out: mothers delayed bathing their newborns, understanding this could cause dangerous heat loss.
Skin-to-skin contact and frequent feeding do the heavy lifting
Nearly all mothers described keeping their baby in direct physical contact with their own body for warmth, combined with regular breastfeeding. This practice, called skin-to-skin contact, emerged as central to how mothers maintained their baby's temperature. Some mothers also massaged their newborns with oil as part of daily body care, which they believed helped maintain skin warmth.
A starting point for better education
This was a small study in one region of Tanzania with only 12 mothers, so these findings cannot be automatically applied everywhere. The researchers did not measure whether these practices actually prevented hypothermia—they only documented what mothers reported doing. However, the study suggests that combining body covering, room warmth, skin-to-skin contact, and breastfeeding may be effective approaches worth testing more rigorously in future research.