Clothing Tips: 0-3 Edition

This blog exists to help my mistakes become someone else's gain. Today I'm going to comment on clothing as it pertains to the first three months of life. Many people might disagree with me, so remember that a lot of the clothing decisions I made have to do with the time of year and the climate. That being said, if I could do all my shopping over again, this is what I would do:

1. No shirts--newborns are held so often that onesies are way better than shirts. Shirts ride up and expose bellies constantly, which is especially undesirable in winter months. There are literally 0-3 shirts I bought that I love and never ever put on them.

2. Winter months=boring onesies--we almost always had the boys in one piece sleepers for the first two months. The boys would wear onesies underneath the sleepers, but no one ever saw them but my husband and me when we changed them. If you're eying a funny/clever/cute onesie, buy it in a size that will fit them between April and October. They don't need cute clothing if no one ever sees them.

Brendan at just over a month in a 0-3 sleeper

3. Sleepers--Invest most in sleepers for the 0-3 and newborn sizes. This is what our boys wore 24/7 for the first few months. When buying them, consider the time of year. The soft terry cloth or fleece ones are great for winter, but the cotton ones are also really nice. The two most important things I would look for in sleepers though would be zippers rather than snaps, and always buy sleepers with feet. Sleepers without feet in 0-3 size are almost completely useless, especially in the winter. Zippers may get jammed from time to time, but trust me, snaps at 3am in the dark never end well. Snaps aren't absolutely evil, but I'd avoid them if/when possible.

4. Buy pants with footies--Later on babies will wear shoes, but at first it's easier to just avoid socks by buying pants with footie bottoms.

Malcolm in a NB sleeper at 7ish weeks

5. Newborn Sizes vs 0-3 sizes vs 3 month sizes--It couldn't just be easy. Oh no. That would be ridiculous. In addition to three different sizes covering this short age range, there's also a tremendous difference between brands. For example, our onesies in 0-3 from Cafe Press only fit for the first month, 0-3 size from Old Navy were almost all in the garage sale box by 2.5 months, but Newborn sized Disney onesies with the grow an inch snaps still fit at 2.5 months. Go figure. Once you buy your stuff, I suggest you lay all the clothes out and sort them by size based on looking at them rather than relying on the tag. Another thing to look at is the weight range on each tag. This tends to be pretty accurate in my limited experience. Now how many should you buy of each? It depends on a number of things, but especially on how often you plan to do laundry. I would suggest having some in each of the three different early sizes (NB, 0-3, and 3 months). Many of our 0-3 clothes were far too big for the boys in their first month (when they weighed less than 8.5 lbs). Of course, some babies are born bigger than that, but I'd still strongly suggest having half a dozen onesies and 2 sleepers in the NB size per baby. If you have reason to believe you're baby might be born at a lower birth weight, maybe grab a few more. I really liked the Disney grow an inch onesies since they lasted for a long time, so those would be a good investment.

Hope that helps someone! Happy shopping!