The Honest Parent's Guide to Surviving Carhartt Baby Clothes

It's a freezing Tuesday in November 2018, and I'm standing in the middle of a disgustingly hip baby boutique in Portland, Oregon, wearing yoga pants that haven't seen an actual yoga studio since Obama was in office. I'm clutching a lukewarm oat milk latte in one hand and staring at a tiny pair of brown duck canvas pants. They look like they belong to a lumberjack who has been hit by a shrink ray. My husband, Dave, is practically vibrating with excitement next to me. He is gesturing wildly at this stiff-as-a-board pair of miniature overalls, whispering about how "sick" Maya is going to look in them.

Maya, for context, is nine months old at this point. She is basically a ten-pound sack of pudding and soft skin. She doesn't chop wood. She doesn't lay brick. But millennial parents have this weird obsession with making our infants look like they work on an oil rig, so Dave insists that buying Carhartt baby clothes is an investment in her wardrobe.

I poke the fabric. The overalls are so stiff they can literally stand up on the display table by themselves. I'm terrified they're going to scrape the top layer of skin right off her chubby little thighs, but Dave is already handing over his credit card. Men and their tiny workwear, I swear to god.

Anyway, the point is, I've spent the last few years navigating the bizarre world of dressing my two kids—Maya, now 7, and Leo, who's 4—in heavy-duty outerwear. And there's a lot nobody tells you about the reality of outfitting a baby in gear designed for literal adult construction workers.

The great canvas softening experiment

So we get these overalls home, right? And I refuse to put them on Maya's bare legs because newborn skin is basically tissue paper. The canvas is incredibly tough. I guess that's the whole appeal of the brand—it survives mud and friction and crawling on concrete—but out of the bag, it feels like medium-grit sandpaper.

I fall down this massive rabbit hole on a Tuesday night at 2 AM trying to figure out how to make them wearable. I'm pouring white vinegar into my washing machine. I'm running them through hot water cycles. I'm practically beating them against rocks in the backyard like a pioneer woman. Wash after wash, they just laugh at me and remain entirely indestructible. It's maddening.

Which brings me to the absolute necessity of layering. You can't, under any circumstances, just throw a baby in raw duck canvas. They will hate you, they'll scream, and they'll get these awful red friction rashes behind their knees.

I panic-bought the Long Sleeve Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit from Kianao just to have something, anything, to act as a barrier between Maya and the overalls. And oh my god, it saved my sanity. It's made of this buttery, 95% organic cotton that's so soft I actually emailed the company asking if they make it in adult sizes. They don't. Tragic. But for a baby, it's perfect because the long sleeves protect their arms from the stiff shoulder straps, and the natural fibers actually let their skin breathe under all that heavy gear. The fabric has just enough stretch that it doesn't bunch up awkwardly under the rigid canvas. If you're going to put your kid in workwear, you need this exact bodysuit underneath. Period.

Dr Miller and the terrifying car seat lecture

Okay, so fast forward to winter. It's snowing, I'm exhausted, and I'm trying to shove Maya into her car seat while she's wearing a heavy, sherpa-lined Carhartt baby jacket. She looks like a stuffed sausage. I'm pulling the harness straps as tight as I possibly can, sweating through my sweater, thinking I'm doing a great job keeping her warm and safe.

A week later, we're at the doctor's office for a checkup. Dr. Miller, who always looks at me with this mix of big pity and slight concern, watches me unbuckle Maya from the infant carrier in her massive coat. She sighs. It's the sigh of a woman who has given this speech a thousand times.

She tells me I'm basically strapping my kid into a death trap. Apparently, the American Academy of Pediatrics has all these warnings about bulky winter clothing in car seats. Dr. Miller explains the physics of it, and I'm sleep-deprived so I only catch half of it, but it's something about compression. Like, the fluffy sherpa lining and the thick heavy canvas feel super dense, so you think the harness is tight. But if you get into a crash, the force instantly flattens all that fluff into thin air. So suddenly, the straps are incredibly loose, and your kid can just eject from the seat.

I felt sick to my stomach. I literally cried in the parking lot. You spend all this money on heavy-duty baby clothes trying to keep them warm, and it turns out you're making them less safe. After that, I completely stopped putting the jackets on her in the car. I'd dress her in her soft organic bodysuit, buckle her securely into the harness so it was tight against her chest, and then just drape the heavy jacket backward over her arms like a blanket. It's annoying, yes, but at least I wasn't having a panic attack every time I hit the brakes.

If you need some softer base layers for your own tiny lumberjack to wear in the car, you can browse Kianao's organic baby clothes here.

The brewery diaper blowout incident

Let's talk about snaps. Because nobody talks about the snaps.

When Leo was born, we dug all of Maya's old Carhartt stuff out of the basement. The durability is honestly insane—they still looked brand new after Maya crawled across every rough surface in Oregon. We put Leo in a pair of the classic brown overalls to go to a family-friendly brewery. He's about six months old at this point.

We're sitting there, Dave is having an IPA, I'm drinking water because I've a headache, and suddenly I hear it. The sound every parent dreads. The rumbling up the back. The blowout.

I grab Leo and sprint to the tiny, cramped bathroom in the back of this brewery. I lay him on the plastic changing table. And that's when I realize: these specific overalls don't have snap closures along the inner legs.

I stared at the ceiling and whispered a curse word that I won't repeat here. To change a diaper in overalls without leg snaps, you've to completely undress the baby. I had to unhook the metal clasps over his shoulders, pull the stiff, poop-covered canvas down his arms, shimmy it down his torso, and pull his legs out, all while he's screaming and kicking and spreading the mess everywhere. I was sweating profusely. It took twenty minutes. I emerged from that bathroom looking like I had been through a war.

Some styles have the inner leg snaps. Some don't. If you buy the ones without the snaps, you're actively choosing violence. Just a warning.

What works and what kind of misses the mark

Because I'm a sucker for punishment, we kept buying different variations of baby clothing to try and make the rugged look work.

Dave ordered the Short Sleeve Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit Ribbed Infant Onesie to put under Leo's summer gear. Look, I love Kianao. I really do. But this one was just okay for this specific purpose. The ribbed texture is super cute on its own, but when you layer it under heavy, unyielding denim or canvas, the ribbing kind of bunches up? Like, it creates these weird friction ridges. It's a great little onesie for just hanging around the house, but as a base layer for rigid workwear, I prefer the smooth finish of the long-sleeve version. Plus, the short sleeves leave their little elbows exposed to the rough fabric.

However, when Leo got a bit older, we got the Organic Baby Romper Long Sleeve Henley Winter Bodysuit. This one is a massive win. It has these three little buttons down the front (the henley neckline), and when you put the overalls over it, the buttons peek out the top and it looks ridiculously charming. More importantly, it actually stretches. The 5% elastane in the fabric means that when Leo was trying to learn how to walk and the stiff pants were fighting his every movement, at least his upper body had full range of motion. And again, no weird synthetic chemicals rubbing against his skin.

Baby skin is so weird and reactive. Maya had eczema patches that would flare up bright red anytime she got too hot, and heavy synthetic fleece linings are basically sweat-traps. The AAP links infant overheating to all sorts of scary things, including an increased risk of SIDS, which Dr. Miller casually mentioned to me during another anxiety-inducing visit. Heavy fabrics trap heat. When you bring a baby indoors wearing duck canvas and sherpa, they heat up like a tiny oven almost instantly.

I learned to constantly check the back of Leo's neck. If he felt clammy, the heavy gear came off immediately, leaving him in just his breathable cotton base layers. It's a constant dance of dressing and undressing.

The final verdict on tiny workwear

Do I regret letting Dave buy those first tiny overalls? No, not really. They're undeniably cute. And the return on investment is wild—I swear you could run over these clothes with a truck and they wouldn't tear. We will probably pass Leo's hand-me-downs to my sister's kid next year.

But you've to respect the fabric. You can't treat it like normal baby clothes. You have to wash it a dozen times, you've to manage the car seat safety issues, and you absolutely must protect your kid's skin with high-quality organic cotton underneath. If you don't, you're just paying for an aesthetic while your baby is quietly miserable.

Ready to build a wardrobe that doesn't feel like literal sandpaper on your baby's skin? Shop the full Kianao organic baby collection right here and save your sanity.

Questions I constantly get asked about this stuff

Do Carhartt baby clothes run big or small?
They run huge. Like, comically large. The brand is designed for layering heavy sweaters underneath, so a 12-month size usually fits like an 18-month. Don't size up unless you want your kid tripping over the hems for six months. I made that mistake with Maya and she looked like she was swimming in brown canvas.

Are they seriously safe for babies to wear?
Yes and no. The clothes themselves are fine for outdoor play, but you've to be super paranoid about the car seat. Never put them in a car seat wearing the bulky coats or thick snowsuits. Just don't do it. Use a soft organic cotton layer for the drive and put the heavy stuff on when you get to the park.

How do you wash the canvas so it stops being so stiff?
Honestly, time is the only real cure, but I had decent luck washing them with a half-cup of white vinegar instead of fabric softener. Fabric softener just coats the fibers in weird chemicals that irritate baby skin anyway. The vinegar helps break down the stiffness a little bit, but mostly, they just need to be worn and dragged through the dirt a few times.

What's the best thing to layer underneath heavy overalls?
Long sleeves. Always long sleeves. The armholes and straps on rigid overalls will rub your kid's underarms and shoulders raw if they're just wearing a t-shirt. Get a tight-fitting, stretchy organic cotton bodysuit (like the Kianao ones I literally wouldn't shut up about earlier) so it acts like a second skin.

Why don't all the overalls have diaper snaps?
I'm convinced the people who design some of these outfits have never seriously met a baby. The classic, older styles often skip the snaps to stay "authentic" to adult workwear. Always check the inseam before you buy, or prepare yourself for the naked-baby-in-a-public-bathroom nightmare.