Saved - Jacob's first vest

When I was pregnant and starting to get together all of J-cub's bits and bobs, everything I read warned against getting too many newborn-sized clothes. I knew I was big, and I knew J-cub would be big, so I got all his clothes in 0-3 month or above sizes.

My mum kindly put together some newborn stuff for the bump's Christmas present - some cardigans, mitts and booties she'd knitted in yellow and green ("Just in case they were wrong"), and a set of 3 newborn-sized vests in white, pale yellow and pale green. They were the tiniest, most gorgeous things I'd ever seen. The cotton was so soft, and each one had a tiny bird, bunny or bear embroidered on the front with a little fabric badge saying "Hello World".

I totally fell in love with them, although I doubted the bump would fit in them, as all my health professionals' kept tripping out the line "Oooh, he's going to be a good size, isn't he?" which had me convinced I was incubating some kind of giant baby (I had dreams where he was born with a full head of hair, the ability to walk and saying "Hello Mummy!"). I do remember putting the vests in the top of the 'baby' section in my hospital bag, and telling Jamie that if I ended up out of it and unable to direct him, he had to make sure the baby was dressed in one of the vests.

When he was born, J-cub weighed a respectable 8lb12oz, but even so the newborn vests swamped him. Here's a photo at a day or two old, demonstrating quite how baggy it was then. His newborn going-home pramsuit, the only other thing we'd bought in that size, was so ridiculously huge that his legs wouldn't reach anywhere near the leg holes, and his arms only came about half-way down the arm holes. We gave up, dressed him in a vest and sleepsuit, and tucked him into his carseat with a pile of blankets on top of him.

When the first week or so settled down we realised that 3 vests barely last a day with a newborn, so we had to make an emergency trip to Tesco for some cheap packs of vests and sleepsuits to see us through. Next time around, I'll hopefully be set for this kind of stuff, as whether the next one is a boy or a girl, they can wear all of J-cub's stuff again. And I won't bother with clothes, it's far easier (and warmer and cwtchier) to keep a newborn in a vest and sleepsuit (and cardi, if necessary) and dispense with outfits totally. There's plenty of time to waste your money on clothes when they're older, and the novelty of teeny-tiny clothes soon wears off.

My not-so-tiny baby stayed in newborn clothes until 5 weeks old, at which point he decided to give up on adhering to stringent sizing guides and sped through the sizes, so much so that he was in 12-18 month sizes at 7 months old, and 18-24 months at 10 months old. Thankfully, he's slowed down now, and at nearly 16 months he's still in 18-24 months with room to spare. Oh except for the few shorts and t-shirts we've got in 2-3 years. At 16 months. They don't tell you about the possibility of this happening when you're budgeting for a baby.

I have in fact saved most of J-cub's clothes, only ebaying those things he never got round to wearing. But just his teeny-tiny white vest with the bird on the front made it into his baby box.