The Reality of Dressing a Baby Without Losing Your Mind

Sarah
2026-04-01T10:16:35+02:00

Within forty-eight hours of bringing Leo home from the hospital, I received three completely contradictory pieces of advice about how to dress him. My mother-in-law hovered over his bassinet, clutching her coffee mug, aggressively whispering that he needed a fleece hat indoors because his tiny hands felt like "little ice cubes." The discharge nurse at the hospital had casually tossed over her shoulder that I should always dress him in "exactly what you're wearing, plus one extra layer," which was profoundly unhelpful because I was wearing mesh underwear and a giant sweat-stained maternity bra. And then, because the universe hates me, my Instagram feed served up a reel of an aesthetically flawless mother claiming the only way to truly bond was by keeping your newborn completely naked in a raw linen ring sling for the first four months of their life.

I was so tired I was practically hallucinating. I remember standing in the middle of our disastrously messy living room, holding a tiny pair of denim baby jeans—who makes jeans for a creature that doesn't even have kneecaps yet?—just weeping. Because here's the secret no one tells you: figuring out what to put on your baby's body is terrifying. You're constantly toggling between the fear that they're freezing to death or that you're accidentally roasting them like a tiny turkey.

Dave, my husband, was honestly no better. For the first two weeks, he walked around our apartment holding a digital laser thermometer that we originally bought for a pizza oven, aiming it at Leo's forehead while muttering about ambient room temperatures. Anyway, the point is, dressing a baby is a minefield of anxiety, weird fabrics, and bodily fluids.

The absolute terror of the room temperature

I don't know about you, but my anxiety peaked around bedtime. Overheating is a massive deal, like, SIDS-level scary. I had read so many horrifying articles on my phone at 3 AM that I was convinced any blanket thicker than a tissue was a death sentence.

We went in for Leo's two-week checkup, and I was on my fourth lukewarm French roast of the day, looking like I had been dragged behind a bus. I practically cornered Dr. Miller, our saint of a pediatrician, and demanded to know the exact mathematical formula for baby layers. She sort of laughed and told me that babies are actually pretty good at letting you know if they're miserable. She said the whole "plus one layer" thing is a decent baseline, but the easiest way to check if Leo was too hot or too cold was just to feel the back of his neck or his chest. His hands and feet were always going to feel cold because his little circulatory system was basically still in beta testing.

She also mentioned something about keeping the room between 68 and 72 degrees Fahrenheit, but seeing as we lived in an old drafty apartment where the thermostat was strictly decorative, I just started putting him in a breathable base layer and hoping for the best. It turns out that a baby's skin is incredibly thin and permeable, so wrapping them in heavy synthetic stuff actually traps their body heat and moisture in this nasty little microclimate.

Here are the absolute rules of baby fabrics, according to my deeply tired brain:

If it sounds like a plastic water bottle when you rub it together, it belongs in the trash. Or the recycling bin. But definitely not on your infant. Polyester is the devil's fabric.

Stretch is life. Getting a rigid piece of clothing over a screaming infant's head is an Olympic sport I've no interest in participating in.

Wash everything first. I know it sounds like neurotic mom behavior, but they treat those warehouse clothes with so much weird stuff that you kind of have to strip it off before it touches your kid's eczema-prone skin.

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Why fabric tags make me want to cry

So let's talk about the Great Starbucks Blowout of 2018. It was a Tuesday. I was wearing my only clean black leggings and holding a venti cold brew. Leo was strapped to my chest in a carrier, wearing this adorable little ribbed outfit I bought because I thought we were going to have a Cute Aesthetic Morning.

Suddenly, I heard the sound. If you're a parent, you know the sound. It's a wet, terrifying rumble. Within seconds, the smell hit me. I rushed into the tiny, poorly lit Starbucks bathroom and realized the diaper had completely failed. The poop was everywhere. It was up his back. It was bordering his neckline.

Normally, taking a onesie off means pulling it up over the baby's head, which in this scenario meant I was going to smear mustard-colored poop directly into his sparse, fluffy newborn hair. Oh god. I was sweating. But then I remembered the shoulder flaps.

I had put him in the Short Sleeve Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit from Kianao. It has these envelope folds on the shoulders, which I always thought were just a weird design choice. But no! They exist so you can pull the entire garment DOWN over their body, past their hips, bypassing the head entirely. I literally wrestled that poopy organic cotton down his little legs and threw it into a wet bag. It was a messy, humiliating experience, but his hair stayed clean. That specific onesie became my holy grail. It has just enough elastane (like 5%) so it doesn't lose its shape after I inevitably wash it on the wrong setting, and the organic cotton is so soft it makes me want to rub it against my own face.

Now, on the flip side, I also bought the Flutter Sleeve Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit when Maya was born, because I'm a sucker for ruffles. And honestly? It's fine. It's really cute for going over to my mother's house so she can take pictures for her Facebook friends. But as a daily driver? The little flutter sleeves kind of bunch up and annoy the hell out of me when I'm trying to shove her arms into a tight sleep sack at two in the morning. So, cute for photos, but maybe not my favorite for practical survival mode.

The midnight snap disaster

I've a lot of opinions about sleepwear fasteners. Probably too many opinions. But when it's 3:14 AM, and you're operating on a collective total of four hours of fragmented sleep, the mechanics of a baby outfit become a very big deal.

Let's talk about snaps. Who invented snaps on footie pajamas? Was it a person who hates mothers? Because trying to align twenty-two metal snaps up the squirming legs of an angry infant in the pitch black is a form of psychological torture. You start at the ankle, you work your way up to the crotch, and then you get to the top and realize you misaligned one snap at the knee, creating a weird gaping hole where the baby's thigh is exposed, and you've to undo the whole damn thing and start over. Plus, those metal snaps get freezing cold in the winter! Dave once spent ten minutes trying to snap a pajama together only to realize he was trying to snap the left leg to the right sleeve.

And if you buy infant sleepwear with functional buttons, you're an absolute sadist and we've nothing to discuss.

What the pediatrician actually said about sleepwear

So how are they seriously supposed to sleep? Dr. Miller basically told us that loose blankets in a crib are a massive hazard for suffocation, which sent my baseline anxiety straight into the stratosphere. I spent the first three weeks just staring at Leo's chest rising and falling instead of seriously sleeping myself.

We moved strictly to sleep sacks at night. But for daytime, like when we were doing tummy time on the living room rug or taking a freezing autumn stroller walk, we needed something else. Dave, who's obsessed with things feeling "premium," bought the Colorful Universe Bamboo Baby Blanket. I rolled my eyes at first because I thought bamboo was just a trendy buzzword that influencers used to charge eighty dollars for a square of fabric.

But honestly, I kind of love it. It's massive. And because it's bamboo and organic cotton, it feels cool to the touch but keeps them warm without turning them into a sweaty little swamp monster. Maya runs really hot—she would literally wake up from naps with damp hair—but the breathability on this thing honestly seemed to help keep stable whatever chaotic thermoregulation was happening in her tiny body. Also, it has planets on it, and Dave is a nerd, so it was a win-win.

honestly, dressing a baby is mostly just trial and error, accompanied by a lot of laundry. You're going to buy things that are entirely impractical. You're going to accidentally put their legs in the armholes. You will probably ruin at least three beautiful outfits with diaper disasters that defy the laws of physics. Just stick to soft things, avoid anything that requires an instruction manual to put on, and forgive yourself when you get it wrong.

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Messy late-night questions I constantly Googled

How many onesies do I genuinely need?
Honestly, I thought six would be enough. That's hilarious. Babies spit up constantly, blow out their diapers, and just generally secrete mysterious fluids. I'd say you need like 10 to 14 basic bodysuits just so you aren't forced to do a load of laundry at midnight on a Tuesday.

Is organic cotton honestly better or is it a scam?
I used to think it was just a hipster tax, but baby skin is aggressively sensitive. Conventional cotton uses a ton of pesticides and harsh dyes, and my son broke out in these weird red eczema patches whenever he wore cheap synthetics. The organic stuff just breathes better and doesn't have the chemical residue. So yeah, I seriously think it matters for their base layers.

How do I wash baby stuff without ruining it?
The tags will tell you to hand wash in the tears of a unicorn and dry flat on a sunlit rock. I ignore all of that. I chuck everything into the machine on a gentle, cold cycle with unscented detergent and hope for the best. Good quality stuff (like the ribbed cotton onesies) will survive the dryer on low heat, but if you want it to last forever, hang it over a chair.

What do I do if my baby screams every time I dress them?
Oh god, Maya used to scream bloody murder every time an article of clothing approached her face. Try distraction. Dave used to sing the Jurassic Park theme song very loudly while I wrestled her arms into sleeves. Also, envelope necklines! Pulling it up from the legs instead of over their sensitive little heads changes the whole game.