The Truth About Newborn Onesies (And How Many You Actually Need)

It’s 3:14 AM in November 2019. I'm standing in the glow of a nursery nightlight that's inexplicably shaped like a slice of pizza, holding a screaming, poop-covered three-week-old Maya. I'm wearing my husband's old college sweatpants which also, somehow, have poop on them. The blowout is total. Catastrophic. I open the top drawer of the changing table and just stare blindly at the neatly folded pile of twenty identical, stiff bodysuits I bought during a 3 AM panic-scroll while I was still pregnant, crying because they all have twenty-seven tiny metal snaps each.

I hate past-me so much.

I'm currently typing this while drinking a cup of coffee that I've microwaved so many times it has lost all molecular integrity, but looking back at that night with Maya (and the similar nights with my older son, Leo, who's now seven and refuses to wear anything but basketball shorts), I realize how aggressively wrong I was about baby clothes. Like, deeply, fundamentally wrong.

When you're pregnant, nesting brain takes over and you start thinking you need to prepare for a literal apocalypse of bodily fluids. You start Googling buying newborn bodysuits in bulk because you read somewhere that babies go through five outfits a day. Please, I'm begging you, step away from the mega-packs.

The great blowout of 2019 (and why shoulder flaps exist)

Let me tell you about buying super cheap onesies for newborns. It seems so smart when you're seven months pregnant and trying to budget for a crib that costs more than your first car, right? You're like, oh, I should just get that twenty-pack from a big box store, they're just going to throw up on it anyway.

No. No.

I bought this massive pack of scratchy polyester-blend things for Maya. First of all, they shrank into these weird little midriff-baring crop tops after one wash. Second, synthetic fabric doesn't breathe. Like, at all. Maya ended up getting this awful, angry red heat rash all over her chest, which sent me spiraling into a total internet panic at 2 AM convinced she had some rare medieval skin disease. My pediatrician, Dr. Chen—who has seen me cry over a hangnail and deserves a medal—gently explained that babies have super sensitive skin and terrible temperature regulation, and maybe I shouldn't be dressing her in what was essentially recycled plastic water bottles.

Anyway, the point is, quality matters way more than quantity. Which brings me to the absolute holy grail of my parenting existence: the envelope neckline.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, look at the shoulders of a good baby bodysuit. See those little overlapping folds of fabric? For the first month of Leo's life, I thought they were just a weird design choice. I was pulling poop-stained collars over his fragile, wobbly little newborn head, getting mustard-yellow stains in his hair, crying, apologizing to him, waking my husband up to hold his arms down. It was a hostage negotiation.

Then one day my mom casually mentioned that the folds are there so you can pull the whole thing DOWN. Over the shoulders. Down the torso. Off the legs. Bypassing the head entirely.

My brain literally short-circuited.

Which is why I basically forced every pregnant friend I've to buy the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit Sleeveless Infant Onesie from Kianao. It’s my absolute favorite base layer because the envelope shoulders are super stretchy but don't get all saggy and weird after you wash them, which is a miracle. It's 95% organic cotton, so it doesn't give them that awful heat rash, and the sleeveless design means you aren't wrestling tiny, fragile baby arms into long sleeves when they're screaming like a banshee. Seriously, trying to put a long sleeve on a thrashing newborn is like trying to put a sweater on a wet cat. Just use a sleeveless base layer. Trust me.

Please don't put a tutu on a three-day-old

Can we talk about gendered baby clothes for a second? When we found out Maya was a girl, my mother-in-law went feral at the mall. We got so many onesies for a newborn girl that had actual, stiff tulle tutus sewn around the waist.

A newborn lies on her back. All day. For months.

Why are we putting crinoline on a creature that hasn't even figured out she has hands yet?! Every time I tried to put one of these ridiculous outfits on her, the tutu would bunch up under her lower back and she'd just lie there on this awkward lump of tulle, screaming. Stick to soft, flat things. Your baby doesn't need to look like she's starring in Swan Lake to go to a pediatrician appointment.

Also, don't even bother with baby socks, they just fall off into another dimension instantly.

Let's talk about the belly button stump for a minute because nobody warns you how gross it's. It looks like a piece of burnt beef jerky just hanging off your beautiful fresh baby. Dr. Chen told me we had to be super careful not to irritate it while it was healing, which usually takes a couple of weeks. If you use regular pull-over onesies, the fabric constantly rubs right across the stump. This is where kimono-style onesies (the ones that wrap across the front and snap on the side) are actually a medical necessity, not just a cute aesthetic choice. You can snap them around the baby without ever dragging fabric across the belly button.

Layering for winter babies without losing your mind

Leo was a January baby. We lived in a drafty apartment at the time, and I was absolutely terrified of him freezing to death. But I was also terrified of the AAP guidelines about safe sleep, which basically tell you that if you put so much as a loose tissue in the crib with your baby, you're a terrible parent. (Okay, they say no loose blankets to reduce SIDS risk, but my postpartum anxiety translated that into PANIC).

Apparently, newborns lose body heat like four times faster than adults do? Or something like that. I don't know the exact thermodynamics, I just know Leo's tiny hands were always like ice cubes. So figuring out outfits for a winter newborn was a nightmare.

You can't use blankets in the crib, so the onesie basically is the blanket. The trick I finally figured out was the AAP rule of thumb: dress them in one more layer than you're wearing to be comfortable. I'd put Leo in a snug, breathable sleeveless organic cotton bodysuit to wick away any weird baby sweat (they do sweat, it's gross), and then a fleece or thermal footie pajama over that. No blankets. No hats indoors (they control heat through their heads, Dr. Chen scolded me about this once when I brought Leo into the office wearing a tiny lumberjack beanie in a heated waiting room).

Explore our organic baby clothes collection if you want to see some actual breathable layers that won't make your baby sweat like a marathon runner.

For stroller walks, though, when you do need an actual blanket to block the wind, I used the Organic Cotton Baby Blanket with Squirrel Print. I mean, it's fine. It's a blanket. It's not going to do your taxes or sleep-train your kid for you. But it's double-layered so it actually blocks the wind pretty well, and the organic cotton is soft enough that when Maya inevitably chewed on the corners, I wasn't panicked about what kind of weird factory chemicals she was ingesting.

When they start eating their own clothes

Speaking of chewing on things. Right around three or four months, both my kids went through this phase where they were constantly soaking the collars of their onesies with drool. Just absolutely saturating them to the point where I had to change their outfits just so they wouldn't get a chill from wearing a wet shirt.

They start trying to jam their entire fist into their mouths, and the onesie collar goes with it. Crap.

I realized they were teething way earlier than the books said they would. Instead of letting them gnaw holes into their clothes, I started attaching the Squirrel Teether Silicone Baby Gum Soother to a pacifier clip. The ring shape was actually skinny enough for Maya's uncoordinated potato-hands to grip, and the silicone didn't get all gross and lint-covered like the rubber ones I tried first. Plus I could just throw it in the dishwasher when it inevitably got dropped on the floor of a Target, which is where all baby toys eventually end up.

The magic number (how many do you honestly need?)

Okay, let's do some math. Before you've the baby, you think you need thirty outfits. You don't.

My husband used to try to "help" by doing the baby laundry, which was sweet until he washed and dried everything on the surface-of-the-sun setting and shrank Maya's entire wardrobe to fit a Barbie doll. So I took over laundry, and I did it every two to three days.

If you wash every few days, you need 8 to 10 good onesies in their current size. That's it. That gives you enough for a fresh one every morning, plus a backup for the mid-day spit-up, plus one extra for the 3 AM blowout. If you buy better quality organic cotton ones that honestly hold their shape and don't fall apart in the wash, you don't need a massive stash.

Also, please skip the "Newborn" size unless your doctor explicitly tells you you're having a tiny baby. Leo was 8 pounds 4 ounces and wore "Newborn" clothes for exactly four days before his thighs got too chunky for the leg holes. Just register for the 0-3 month size. They might be a little baggy the first week, but you'll get way more use out of them.

Instead of buying forty cheap things and washing them constantly and losing your mind folding them all, just get a few really good organic ones that don't turn into sandpaper after three washes, you know?

Ready to upgrade from those stiff, scratchy mega-packs to clothes your baby will seriously want to sleep in? Browse the KIANAO collection before your next 3 AM laundry crisis.

My messy, unfiltered FAQ about newborn clothes