Baby Clothes - the early days

I thought I'd outline my personal experiences with useful - and useless - baby paraphernalia.  Honestly, there is SO much that I couldn't hope to cover it all, certainly not in one post, so I will start with clothing in the first few months

WHAT CLOTHING?

In the early weeks, the baby mostly sleeps, feeds, needs changing and sometimes vomits (or frequently vomits, if you are extra-lucky!).  As such, clothing ought to be chosen to best facilitate these processes. 

For nights, open-bottom nightgowns are golden - changing is a breeze, and you don't have to worry about baby getting cold, because you can put socks on them and then they are generally all swaddled and wrapped up like a parcel of fish and chips!  Fiddling with press-studs on suits overnight is just a giant pain - baby wakes up as you fuss and fiddle, and at 4am it's easier to just pull up a nightgown.  Yes, you can put a boy in a nightgown!

For daytime, the ordinary 'onesies' or all-in-one suits are very practical.  You can add a singlet for added warmth if required (Tabitha was born in the middle of winter), and you don't need to fuss with socks because they generally have built-in feet.  The BEST brand I came across was Marquise.  Not too expensive, these onesies were just so, so soft.  The more we washed them, the nicer and softer they felt.  They come in simple, sweet prints (plain white, pastel polka dots etc) and feel lovely against soft baby skin.  We also had some suits from Purebaby, Bonds, Bebe by Minihaha, Petit Bateau, Gaia and others, and while I would actually recommend ALL these brands (they were all good for different reasons), the Marquise jumpsuits just can't be beaten in my opinion!

You can buy the Marquise suits at most department stores and baby boutiques.  For other cute suits (particularly as baby gets a little older and you want to dress her up), this is a great website - www.babi.com.au is a online retailer dedicated ONLY to all-in-one suits.  Those 'excess stock' stores like TSL are also good places to stock up on Bonds and Purebaby - I still buy all of Tabitha's pajamas there.

HOW MANY?

How many outfits do you need?  Well, this is one of the few areas I would recommend Quantity over Quality!  You don't need the most expensive, fancy items, but you do need enough of them.  I found that Tabitha needed her outfit changed at least FIVE times every day in the early weeks - vomit, milk, nappy business etc.  Because I was swamped enough with coping with a new baby, I didn't want the added pressure of frantically laundering her clothes.  So we had around 15 outfits in regular use.  It seems like a lot (I'm positive you could get by with less) but we loved having a big rotation.  Around 3 open-bottom nighties, 8 Marquise jumpsuits, and 5 other jumpsuits.  In addition, we had a few 'nice' outfits, which really only got worn a few times for photos.

SIZES

How about sizes?  Well, I wasn't expecting a tiny baby (I was absolutely massive, and we have a history of decent sized babies in the family) so, on the advice of my mother, I only had a handful of 0000 size outfits.  Maybe eight.  She told me that the baby would really be fine in 000 size from the start - they would just be a little big, and I could roll up the sleeves.  She was right.  I am still glad that we had some 0000 sizes though, because for photos, it was nice to have some things that fitted really well.

I should point out - I put all Tabitha's cotton suits in the dryer.  She was born in mid June, so it was just a reality that we used the dryer a whole lot.  This means that all of her suits shrunk to roughly half a size smaller - so the 000 were actually somewhere between 000 and 0000.

Tabby wore the 0000 for a couple of weeks, then the 000 for a couple of months.  She was in the 00 for a few more months, and now, at 8 months of age, is in 0 and even 1 clothing.  She is very long, so she wears size 12 - 18 month pants and leggings.

NICE CLOTHES

Once Tabitha was a little older (6 weeks and beyond, I'd say), she started to actually wear her 'nice' outfits.  We had some lovely things from Bebe, Purebaby, Petit Bateau and Absorba.  Sweet little jumpsuits with matching bibs and hats.  We had so many nice things (that I had bought, received as gifts, and also from my mother, who seemed to arrive with a beautiful new outfit every time she visited - i.e. daily!), so rather than let them go to waste before Tabby grew out of them, I put her in her 'good' clothes all the time.  I'm so glad I did - babies grow so quickly, and if I saved outfits for 'best', they would never have been worn!

ACCESSORIES

Hats, bibs, socks, mittens, shoes, booties, blankets, jackets, cardigans...  What is useful?

Debbie Bliss Cashmerino 8 ply and the same in a 5 ply 'baby weight' for a lighter weight beanie.

We used loads and loads of bibs.  Newborns seem to always have a little milk dripping around their faces, and changing a bib is simpler than a full outfit change.  Tabitha was a very dribbly baby right up until her first teeth came through, around 5.5 months.  So she pretty much always wore a bib for the first 6 months of her life.  You can find incredibly sweet bibs - I bought every nice one I came across, because I hated ugly bibs ruining her nice outfits!  I found a lot of nice ones by THIS label, and there are also lots of gorgeous ones in little baby boutiques and on Etsy.

Once the baby is older and feeding itself (which it will do from around 6 months if you do Baby-Led Weaning, which I cannot recommend enough), I suggest you use the technique of 'double bibbing' - cover the baby up in a long-sleeved bib (Silly Billyz are the only brand I've found that make these small enough for a 6 month baby - just roll the sleeves up a little), then pop a 'pelican bib' over the top to catch larger bits of food (these are the moulded plastic bibs that turn up at the bottom).

Socks are a must - the easiest way to keep little feet warm (I didn't bother with booties or tiny shoes - so fiddly, too easy to slip off, and they seemed far less comfortable on tiny new feet than simple socks).  You may have heard parents moaning about how hard it is to find socks that actually Stay On - it's true, 99 per cent of socks out there seem to slip straight off!  Luckily, the socks I stocked up on while pregnant turned out to be absolutely brilliant - they are soft, stretchy, and NEVER fall off!  The socks I used and recommend are from Bebe - here they are, though I bought them at David Jones.  I am actually really grumpy that they don't make them in a size larger than 6 months, since I haven't been able to find a single pair of socks that stay on, now that she's grown out of the Bebe ones.

We never bothered with scratch mittens.  I have seen babies wearing them, and even know a woman who wraps her baby's hands in tiny tube socks!  If you find your baby is gouging at their face, by all means try some, but we never found the need for them.

We had a couple of knitted jackets and coats - I picked out a few patterns that I liked from the knitting shop, along with some lovely wool (some of that Cashmerino DK), and my father's elder sister, a masterfully skillful knitter, whipped up some lovely little woolen jackets.  Truth be told, she didn't wear them all that much - new babies are generally so well wrapped up that they don't really need a jacket.  It's not really until they are a little more mobile that I think jackets and coats are useful - certainly from around four months or so, if the weather will be cool, a woolly jacket is worthwhile.  But I guess my point is, don't bother with buying or making them in tiny sizes.

Blankets - oh yes!  Blankets, bunny rugs, muslin wraps, waffle wraps...  These are all incredibly useful.  Here is what I would recommend - again, remembering that Tabitha was born in the colder months:

• A couple of 'waffle blankets'.  These are similar in weight to a traditional flannel bunny rug, but I think they are superior for wrapping, as they have a slight stretch to them, which allows them to wrap closely and firmly to the baby, and not come untucked too easily.  You want a decent size - a metre square or so is good.  Waffle blankets are also (thanks to their raised square pattern) warmer than most similar weight baby blankets, without being too bulky.  A good quality waffle blanket is more expensive than a bunny rug, but they wash and wear really well and are much more durable.  We had three in regular rotation - two white and one pale pink.

• A few traditional flannelette bunny rugs.  Actually, we had more than a few!  In my pregnancy madness, I obsessively bought these.  It seems like every time I saw them for sale, I bought another one.  I think we had around 15.  No, I'm not joking...  Honestly, though, they were (and still are) darn useful.  I didn't use them to wrap Tabitha up all that much (I preferred the slight stretch of the waffle blankets, and most bunny rugs are too small to use for swaddling past the very early weeks) - but I did find them SO useful for just having around - throwing over her as another layer when asleep, putting under her on the carpet for tummy time, laying under her in case of vomit while I was feeding etc.  In truth, you can use cloth square nappies for most of this stuff, but having super-large versions was useful.  That said, you might find 3 or 4 useful - you probably don't need 15!

• Speaking of cloth square nappies...  A stack of flanellette flat nappies is always handy, for mopping up spills, catching errant breastmilk or wee, laying down under baby on the change table etc.  You can also get a packet of muslin square nappies (I got a pack of pink and white ones from Mothercare that were cheap and great quality) - I find I used them more, as they are softer.  I still use them all the time (on the change mat, catching breaskmilk leaks in the middle of the night while feeding).  I suggest about 5 - 10 of each sort.

• In terms of actual 'blankets', I cannot tell you how brilliant I found a large, square, plain old knitted blanket!  I used a pattern from my local wool shop, and knitted a couple of them in different colours.  It is the simplest pattern - cast on three stitches in 8 ply wool on a pair of 4.5 circular needles (80cm circulars).  Knit 3, then continue in plain knit, increasing on the third stitch of every row.  When you've used 5 balls of wool, start decreasing on the third stitch of every row, until you have 3 stitches left on the needles.  Cast off, sew in your ends.  This blanket ends up being around 80cm square, and is beautifully stretchy because it is sort of knitted on the 'bias'.  Actually - stay tuned, I'll do a proper post about it soon, with some photos.  It is the most wonderful blanket to have for a baby - warm, soft, stretchy and simple.  Any time we left the house in the cold, Tabitha had one of these tucked around her, over the top of her swaddling.

MY LIST

So - if I had my time again, what would my shopping list look like for the first 4 or so months?

• Around eight size 0000 jumpsuits and nighties, including one or two 'nice' ones for photos in the early days;
• Around 15 size 000 jumpsuits, with a couple of nighties, and a few 'nice' outfits with matching bib/hat;
• 5 size 000 size singlets;
• 3 beanie hats - one stretchy cotton, one light wool, and one chunkier woolen one;
• 10 bibs - cute ones, since they are on all the time, in all the photos.  Also, plain white bibs stain much quicker;
• Around 6 pairs of socks;
• One or two knitted jackets / cardigans in 000;
• A dozen muslin and/or flannel flat nappies for spills etc.;
• A few flannel bunny rugs;
• Two or three waffle blankets;
• One or two lovely knitted blankets;
• A few lightweight muslin wraps (like a bunny rug but made of sheer muslin, these are useful for wrapping and swaddling a baby in warmer weather or if you are somewhere heated indoors.

I'm sure I don't need to point out that everything needs to be washed before use - many clothing items and blankets have a chemical layer from manufacturing and processing, and who know what floors and surfaces these precious little jumpsuits have touched on their way to the shop?!  I set aside a couple of days and washed, dried and ironed every single item, from socks to bedlinen to dresses and jumpsuits.  It was actually fun to do - yes, ironing dozens of tiny singlets does seem like fun when you're pregnant, nesting and possibly a little crazy...

So.  That's a fair bit of information!  Soon I will post on the assorted 'stuff' babies need / don't need in the early months - furniture, nappies, prams and carriers, car seats, toys etc.