One piece of advice we were given time and time again while I was pregnant was: “don’t waste your money on newborn clothes.” If I had a dollar for every time we heard that I would’ve easily been able to buy my son an entire second wardrobe.
Out of fear and the smart advice of a friend I bought a few sets of newborn clothes. All in all I probably had 5-10 newborn sized onesies and 3 newborn clothes sets from Carter’s. I did sneak two newborn sweater vests into the house as well incase he needed them for his newborn pictures. 🙂 We had some hand me down outfits from my niece that were green and yellow. I figured if we didn’t use them there was not really too much money wasted but that we would be set in case we needed them for a few days.
Most of his wardrobe that I purchased was 3 months and up and 60%-70% of the outfits we were given were 12 months and above.
My son’s coming home outfit was newborn sized and I swore from the day we got it that I didn’t care if he fit in it or not, he was wearing it home. When I thought about him not fitting I thought that he would be too big for his outfit. Never would I imagine that he would be SWIMMING in his newborn sized pj’s.
Little man was 7 pounds 4 oz (21 inches) when he was born and 6 pounds 12 oz when we left the hospital.
Needless to say at 5 weeks old he still fit into most of his newborn outfits.
Hands down my favorite outfits were made by Carter’s. This might be because them seemed to fit him the best or it might be because they are just so darn cute. While he wore body suits (onesies) most days, when visitors came over I made sure to have him in a Sleep & Play outfit. (How cute are these? and these?) Carter’s does tend to run a LITTLE bit smaller so I could see where people would be convinced they would never use newborn sized clothes. He did outgrow his body suits from Carters faster than he did the Sleep & Play outfits or the sets.
Most newborn clothes have weights listed in the tags and they tended to go up to 8 or 9 pounds. While I expected my son to be a larger baby, there is no way to predict exactly what size they will be when born!
Needless to say MY advice for a first time mom is don’t skip the newborn clothes. If nothing else have a few packs of onesies on hand in case your baby is smaller than 8 pounds.