Baby clothes

How many is too many? How much is enough? Part of the confusion stems from the inconsistency of naming.

	The onesie is a staple. People say you can't have too many onesies but I disagree. I feel we did have too many in the 0-3m and 3m size. They're so cute, everyone wants to buy them for you, but we didn't end up using all of them because we had too many.
	Maybe I would have been crazier about the bodysuit if my son had been born at the beginning of winter, but I didn't ever use these. For sure I would rank the importance of this garment higher than a long-sleeved shirt. The snaps at the bottom are essential to prevent it from riding up.
	For us the footed PJ is the MOST ESSENTIAL. The current guidelines for infant sleep are that there should be no blankets, so to keep the baby warm, you need a one-piece thing like this. The variety comes into play with the thickness of the fabric. They can zip up or zip down (where the zipper head resides near the child's neck or foot. They also come in a all-snap variety. I think it's personal preference, I like the snaps but my husband likes the zippers. You can also get ones that have like built-in mittens for the hands.
	For the 0-3 months, we used the Kimono Top, Footed Pants & Hat Set to increase the versatility of the large number of onesies. In fact, more kimono tops would have been good. With our son's hernia, we don't put him in pants often. The waistband puts pressure on the bulging area and he screams bloody murder when it causes him pain.
	A romper is fun and sleeveless. We have one with a hood that is really useful for protecting the baby's head from getting sunburned when I am wearing him in a carrier and out for walks. We say it's like he's a bro and showing off his muscled arms.
	Another quirk of our baby is that he was born needing access to his hands. Therefore swaddles were pointless. Swaddle blankets can be used for other things but the new trend in velcro swaddles, halo sleep sacks and love to dream zipper swaddles just would not have worked for us. Luckily, I had only one in each size.

Here's a breakdown of how many of each thing we had. I say had because the smaller sizes have already been sent along to my younger sister. The truth about sizing is that you know it's time to size up when you see the back bulge coming out of the neck of the onesie. Also, if it is challenging to snap. For us, we cloth diaper. The drawback to cloth diapering is that they can be bulky, so we have sized up to 6 month clothing for daytime when baby is in cloth, but we can still use the 3-6 month size at night when he is wearing disposable diapers.

I took a catalog of how many of each type of item in each size range we had (in blue) so that I could say what I would recommend and then compared that with three sources (in red) that make recommendations. Some categories we had more than 10, but it made the graph look funny so if we had more than 10, like we did for onesies, I just didn't show it. One unexpected thing that I love is putting socks on my baby. His daytime uniform is a short-sleeved onesie and socks. Maybe if my baby had been born in winter, he would have needed more footie PJs and jackets/coats.

I'm trying to send these items to my sister because I started worrying about having enough clothes around Jan 14 (week 32) and I didn't have my baby shower until a month later, and I think that was too late for me to feel prepared.