The Truth About Baby Overalls (And Why I Was Totally Wrong)

It was October 2017, and I was standing in the microscopic, dimly lit bathroom of a neighborhood café wearing a silk blouse I had absolutely no business wearing as a new mother, staring down at my six-month-old daughter Maya who was encased—and I mean completely locked away—in a pair of rigid, dark-wash denim overalls. I had a half-drank iced Americano balancing precariously on the edge of the flimsy plastic changing table, and I was sweating through my silk.

Maya had just produced a blowout of epic, catastrophic proportions.

And because I was a first-time mom who prioritized aesthetics over basic human functionality, I had dressed her in these gorgeous, authentic vintage baby overalls I found on Etsy for, like, sixty dollars. They had real metal clasps. Industrial-grade farm equipment clasps. And absolutely zero access to the crotch area.

Disaster.

I had to completely undress her. In a public bathroom. While she screamed like I was actively torturing her, sliding the soiled denim down her legs while trying desperately not to let the mess smear onto the white onesie underneath, which was impossible, obviously. I remember looking at my own reflection in the smudgey mirror, hair sticking to my forehead, thinking, I'm never putting my child in overalls ever again.

Anyway, the point is, I was wrong about overalls entirely.

The crotch snap conspiracy

For the first year of Maya's life, I swore them off. I became an evangelist against baby overalls. If I saw a friend holding up a pair at a baby shower, I'd practically slap them out of her hand like they were poisonous.

But then I had Leo.

And I realized something deep: the problem wasn't the garment itself, the problem was my fundamental misunderstanding of infant clothing architecture. If you take away one thing from my sleep-deprived rambling, let it be that buying an infant outfit without a hidden zipper or snaps at the crotch is basically declaring war on your own sanity because you'll eventually find yourself trying to snake two chubby, flailing legs out of armholes while dodging literal human feces.

Seriously, it's a non-negotiable. If you're shopping for a baby and you pick up an adorable pair of corduroy dungarees and you flip them upside down and it's just a solid, uninterrupted seam of fabric? Put them back on the rack and walk away.

What Mark thinks about the construction worker aesthetic

When I had Leo, my husband Mark got really weirdly obsessed with the idea of dressing him like a tiny, unemployed lumberjack. I think it's a dad thing? Mark spent weeks hunting for carhartt baby overalls because apparently having a son means he needs to be dressed for a shift at the steel mill at 8 AM.

Which is a really specific baby overalls boy aesthetic that I find hilarious because the kid was four months old and couldn't even hold his own head up yet, let alone operate heavy machinery.

Mark finally bought a pair, and they were canvas. Like, thick, unyielding tent canvas. Leo looked adorable, honestly, but when he tried to crawl, he looked like a turtle stuck on its back. The fabric was so stiff he couldn't bend his knees properly. Mark was so proud, taking a million pictures of him looking like a tiny foreman, but after twenty minutes Leo started rage-crying because he couldn't get his legs under his torso to move. We ended up taking them off and he spent the rest of the day in just his diaper. So much for that.

Just buy the ones with adjustable shoulder buttons and rollable cuffs so they fit for more than three weeks, moving on.

The hip thing Dr Miller mentioned

I didn't even know this was a thing until my pediatrician, Dr. Miller—who always looks like he desperately needs a nap and a strong cup of coffee—casually mentioned it during Leo's nine-month checkup.

I had Leo in this cute little one-piece overall thing that had footies attached to the bottom. I was wearing him in our Ergo carrier a lot back then because he refused to nap in his crib. Dr. Miller saw the outfit and kind of frowned and said something about how baby carriers and footed clothes don't really mix well.

I guess if their toes are trapped in a footie overall while they're hanging in a carrier, the fabric pulls tightly upward and jams their tiny hip sockets? Or maybe it restricts the cartilage? I don't totally get the mechanics, to be honest. I was probably functioning on three hours of sleep and staring at a spot on the wall, but he basically said that it can mess with their hip alignment or cause dysplasia if they're in there too long with tight footies.

He told me to stick to footless styles if I'm wearing them. Which made sense, because now that I think about it, whenever I took Leo out of the carrier in that outfit, his little toes would be all scrunched up and red at the ends. So yeah, footless overalls forever. You just put socks on them. And then they kick the socks off immediately, and you lose the socks forever. Such is life.

What actually goes underneath these things

Okay, this is the part nobody warns you about. Overalls require layering. You can't just put a baby in overalls and call it a day, unless you want the straps rubbing their bare nipples raw, which is a horrible image, I'm so sorry.

But layering is a nightmare. If you put a regular long-sleeve t-shirt under overalls, the second you pick the baby up, the shirt rides up to their armpits, exposing their belly, and the fabric bunches up around their chest like a life preserver. It drove me CRAZY.

My absolute savior for this was the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit Sleeveless Infant Onesie. Seriously, this thing is my favorite base layer of all time. Because it snaps at the crotch, it stays pulled down flat against their belly. No bunching. No riding up. And because it's sleeveless, you don't get that weird, restrictive double-layer of fabric on their arms if you're putting a sweater over the overalls later. It just acts like a smooth, breathable organic cotton second skin. Maya practically lived in these under her little linen dungarees. It's just so much easier.

Now, I'll say, I also bought the Organic Baby Romper Long Sleeve Henley Winter Bodysuit for Leo, thinking it would look super cute under his softer corduroy overalls. And the fabric is amazing—like, stupidly soft, I wish I had a adult-sized version to sleep in. But Mark absolutely HATES it when I pair it with overalls.

The henley style has these three little buttons on the chest. And when you put the bib of the overalls over those buttons, it creates this weird, bulky lump right in the middle of Leo's chest. Mark always complains that it makes Leo look like he has a bizarre chest lump, and he fumbles with all the buttons when he's trying to dress a squirmy baby. So we mostly just use that henley romper on its own now, paired with sweatpants. It's great, but maybe not the best under-layer if you've a partner who gets easily frustrated by tiny buttons.

Oh, and speaking of frustration—during the era when Leo violently hated being dressed, I had to keep a basket of distractions next to the changing pad just to get his legs into his pants. I literally used to just hand him one of the pieces from his Gentle Baby Building Block Set. They're soft rubber, so when he inevitably threw it at my head because he didn't want to wear clothes, it didn't give me a concussion. The things we do, right?

Building the perfect tiny wardrobe

If you're trying to figure out how to dress your kid without losing your mind, and you want pieces that actually work with you instead of against you, you can browse Kianao's full collection of organic baby clothes right here.

Why we overcomplicate everything

I look back at that day in the café with Maya, and I just want to give my younger self a hug. And maybe a fresh shirt. We try so hard to make our kids look like these perfectly curated little Instagram models, but they're just tiny, messy humans who want to be comfortable. They want to bend their knees. They want to crawl without canvas digging into their thighs. They want to have a blowout without their mother having a mental breakdown trying to unbuckle metal farm clasps.

Overalls are great. Honestly, they're. They protect their little knees when they start crawling, they're durable, and yes, they look insanely cute. But you just have to buy the right ones. Soft organic fabrics. Crotch snaps. Stretchy waistbands. It's not rocket science, but when you're functioning on zero sleep, it kind of feels like it.

Ready to upgrade your little one's closet with things they'll actually want to wear? Check out all of Kianao's baby apparel and accessories today.

The questions everyone asks me

Are baby overalls genuinely practical for daycare?
Oh god, only if they've snaps at the bottom! Don't send your kid to daycare in overalls without crotch access, the teachers will secretly hate you. They change like a million diapers a day. If you send them in the easy-snap ones, they're totally fine, but if you send the complicated ones, you're just being mean.

What size should I buy?
Always size up. Always. Overalls usually have two sets of buttons on the shoulder straps anyway, so if they're a little big, you just use the top button and roll the ankles up. Leo wore a size 12-month pair from the time he was 8 months until he was almost a year and a half just by adjusting the straps. It's the one piece of clothing that genuinely stretches your dollar.

Do babies sleep in overalls?
What? No. No, please don't do that. Overalls have hardware—buckles, buttons, thick seams. I mean, would you want to sleep in denim dungarees? Put that kid in a soft footie pajama and save the overalls for when they're awake and destroying your living room.

How do I get stain blowouts out of them?
Listen, if it's that bad, I usually just throw the outfit in the garbage. Kidding. Sort of. For real though, since a lot of overalls are thicker material like corduroy or canvas, stains really set into the grooves. I hit it with cold water immediately (hot water cooks the protein in the poop, which is gross but true), scrub it with blue Dawn dish soap, and leave it in the sun. The sun is literal magic for baby poop stains. I don't know the science, but it works.