I have an eight month old baby girl and everyone seems determined to give her dresses.
She is just learning to stand and walk and dresses are not very practical as she steps on the hems and falls over. Whilst she never really did the crawling thing on the occasions that she does and is wearing a dress the darn thing just gets in the way.
Personally I just don’t think dresses are very practical for babies, and I’d much rather put her in little one piece grow suits or a tracksuit type outfit. Plus it is much easier to change her if you are just stripping off a pair of pants to get to the nappy rather than the little tights that go on under dresses.
What do other doper parents do? Does your or did your baby girl wear lots of dresses?
No, my girl never has not worn dresses very often, for the same reasons you describe. While she looks cute in them, they are not always comfortable for her, practical for moving around a lot, or easy to do diaper changes. Now that she can walk, dresses are fine for special occasions, but she is in daycare most days and I need to send her in clothes that can get painted and smeared and dirty without me having a heart attack over the cost or the ‘look’ of the clothes.
She was 3 months old last Christmas, and it was very cold and stormy here. My mom gave the baby a dress to wear on Christmas, one of those fancy affairs with short, puffy sleeves. So, we had: the diaper, a onesie, tights, the dress, those ridiculous “underpants” which accompany such dresses, and a sweater over the stupid puffy sleeves. We had her in the dress for the 90 minutes she was in my Mom’s company, then changed to a one-piece out fit.
I don’t have kids, but I grew up with six little sisters. Dresses were only for church, and visiting (especially when visiting the dress-giver). The rest of the time they wore outfits as you describe, or even just a diaper and a t-shirt around the house.
I’m very relieved to read that other people find the same thing. Yes dresses look adorable on little girls but when it comes down to dressing her for the day practicality wins out.
I almost never put LittleSnoopy in dresses. For church she usually goes in pants and a shirt because she’s 3 and they’re on the floor trying to eat paste during Sunday School most of the time.
She’s been promised a “princess dress” for Easter, though
You’re not alone, leechbabe. When Paidhi Girl was a baby, dresses were only for photo shoots and that brief moment of displaying baby to company or relatives who might have bought the thing. They really aren’t made for crawling in, or learning to walk, or anything really useful.
My girl is 6 now, and I very rarely send her to school in dresses, but she does wear sun dresses all summer. When she was little, dresses were for before crawling and after walking, but even then not daily wear. I am a firm believer in baby-gros, it’s too bad I had to get relatives to ship them from the UK for me. America doesn’t know what it’s missing!
My six year old sometimes wore dresses (she only crawled for a month so they really didn’t get in her way much) until she was oh about 3 and then whoosh she started a girly girl thang that she is still heavily into. Though she does wear jeans and long pants, if she had her druthers she would wear nice dresses every day. Mom usually wares slacks, excepting a rare night out on a date with me.
My girls had innumerable cute little dresses when they were babies and toddlers, many of them made of lace and/or velvet. These dresses were, for the most part, passed on to us by other families whose daughters were older, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they were made sometime in the 1960s, given the amount of actual wear they got. The kids typically wore each dress once or twice, for between two and four hours at a time, before I passed them down to someone else.
Ironically, if you went only by the formal and holiday pictures of the children, you’d think each of them wore nothing but dresses until she was five or six.
Once my older daughter could walk, she wore dresses to play in; they were comfy and cool in summer especially, and it gets hot here. Before that, though, they were largely worn only at church.
The current DangerBaby is learning to crawl and wears pants or playsuits. She’s also outgrowing everything warm, and the stores are full of summer wear. Hello, there are months of cool weather yet to come!
[QUOTE=dangermom]
Once my older daughter could walk, she wore dresses to play in; they were comfy and cool in summer especially, and it gets hot here.
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That’s actually how I operate, a female who grew up with two brothers.
I was never too girly, but wore the occasional dress, and in summer, dresses can sometimes be preferable.
I don’t know what “baby gros” are, but I see lots of adorable dress-type outfits for infants and toddlers which not only look comfortable, but look like they would last awhile. Some of them are dresses which are meant to be worn with leggings.
All are cotton or cotton knit, pre-shrunk, and look feminine but not silly.
Dresses don’t have to be puffed-sleeve monstrosities.
Yep, dresses suck when they are learning to crawl, starting working on stairs. They look adorable, but even those really short dress and leggings things, the skirt is a little too long. For some babies this is fine because they really aren’t that active (my cousins daughter never crawled and walked late - and when she started walking it was instant mastery), but for most of us, this is prime jammie/legging time.
Now my four year old wears nothing but dresses in the summer. Easy to put on, easy to go potty while wearing them, and “girls wear dresses.” However, it being something like 20 below out now, we need to get her to wear jeans in the winter.
Dresses are not for babies learning to crawl and walk. Put the child in tight fitting jumpers, etc. for that. Go ahead and dress her up for going out but if you are going to be anywhere she can get down and play then take a change of clothes.
Ours never did wear dresses as a daily thing. Mostly just at special occations. One thing we did find out though is to stay away from the stiff lace that they often tack on to baby dresses. That stuff can chafe baby-skin in five minutes flat. If you are going to use dresses get them in cotton jersey, etc. No amount of cute can make up for an uncomfortable baby.
Little girls look cute and all when they’re dressed up, but only for a few minutes. The second they eat something, they’re wearing it. I only have a boy, but my neice isn’t much of a dress-up girl. She looks adorable in a dress, but it’s not too practical for a girl like her.
One good use for a baby in a dress is to kind of toss them up in the air and the dress becomes a parachute and you can pretend she’s floating. It’s good for a baby giggle.
That would explain why they always looked so unhappy in the pictures.
In the meantime I am going to work very hard at pursuading my mother and company that dresses are out for bubs. Perhaps if Vogue did a write up about it that might convince them.
My daughter had a few two-piece outfits that were basically a very short dress with matching bloomer-type thingies. That’s what we put her in when we wanted her to look a bit more girly.
Im curious, how often and how many of these women that you speak of, who want to give her dresses, wear dresses themselves? If you dont(usually) wear dresses, if your teenage daughter lives in jeans, why would you want your baby girl to wear them? Just because she cant fight back?
TeaGirl (finally an appelation I like!) wears dresses for church and special occasions, with tights and bloomers (but not with lace across her butt) and in the summer, a little hat. (She’s still kind of thin haired, she needs sunshade.) When it’s really cold, though, we’ve found some very cute, not so casual jumpsuits, in the style I call bubble suits (they’re really puffy around the middle, fitted at cuffs and ankles) in heavier fabrics that are suited to the weather. They usually have smocking or lace and are in colors and patterns which make her girly-ness apparent. (I’m not resorting to sticking one of those things on her head.) I think she looks downright adorable.
I agree that dresses aren’t practical for every day for toddlers and infants, but for occasions, why not? They look cute. And yes, I wear dresses and skirts almost exclusively when it’s not eleventy million below zero with snow up to my whoopsidaisy.
