Size Matters

My very dear friend is pregnant with their first, and so of course I have passed along a veritable plethora of baby related items for them to use (or not use, depending!) for their new little man. We were talking last night, and she wants to show me the clothes they have gotten on their own (as opposed to coming in the mail in a random cardboard box from me!) and I remembered something that nobody told me, so I passed this tidbit on to her, and I will now pass it on to you.

The size on the tag of baby clothes is totally and ridiculously arbitrary.

When I got bags of hand-me-downs and boxes of thrift store and yard sale finds, I plopped my giant pregnant butt down on the floor and sorted them all neatly and accurately by the size that was listed on the tag. I boxed up the stuff he wouldn't be wearing for a while, put the rest in his closet, and, having soothed my organizational OCD, ate some ice cream and took a nap.

Then he was born. And I was quite unprepared to find that some of his newborn clothes were clearly several months too big for him. How odd, I thought. It says "Newborn" right there on the tag...he's a newborn baby...and yet it is falling off of him into a cotton puddle on the floor. Hmmm. What to do...?

I finally, after hours of pondering in a pregnancy-brain induced fog, discovered that if I re-sorted his clothes by their ACTUAL size, it was a much more accurate process. So I did this (it took a lot longer than the tag sorting, but was more efficient in the long run, obviously) and was supremely satisfied with my brilliance. So, in the end, problem solved.

But what sense does it make, really, for all these baby clothes to be such poorly labeled and incongruous sizes? As if moms don't have enough to worry about. As if we aren't already trying to muddle through the science of choosing the perfect diaper, and the catastrophe that is choosing a good baby monitor...now we have to realize this, formulate a plan, and resolve it. All on our own.

Well never fear, fellow mothers. I am here to help you.