As all mums quickly realise, a babygrow is de rigueur for every newborn. A soft, comfortable onesie which can be opened and closed quickly (albeit with a bit of practice if you’re a first-time mum) is the central part of what is quaintly called the baby’s ‘layette’.
Lots of mums move their bubs swiftly out of babygrows and into pyjamas – if you’re one of them, check out Frugi’s uber-cool jim-jams.
However, I’m sticking with babygrows for a while yet. Why? Because we have stone floors in our house. Being a typical 18-month-old Oliver is far too busy to bother with things like socks or slippers, so the integral feet of the babygrow are the only things that stand between his tootsies and the sub-zero temperatures of our rather-beautiful-but-totally-impractical-and-I-told-you-it-would-be-difficult-to-clean slate floor.
And besides, who can resist the snuggly charms of a toddler in a babygrow? I don’t want Ol growing up too fast – he’s got the rest of his life to wear pyjamas. These babygrows are rather special, too. They’re made from Frugi’s fab organic super-soft cotton. They come in a lovely range of colours and sizes. They’re beautiful and natural, with no garish Disney cartoons on. There’s plenty of room for the voluminous cloth night nappy, but they don’t look too baggy with a ‘sposie on underneath either. The popper fastenings are particularly clever as they do up right between the legs, so there isn’t that irritating little gap you get between with other babygrows.
The eczema friendly version has no back label, which is great as one of my few gripes with Frugi clobber is the size of the labels and the fact they don’t lie flat (I’m told this will be rectified soon). The care label is in the same ultra-soft fabric as the garment itself.
I love these babygrows and will be really sad when Oliver grows out of them. They are remarkably good value too –consider the amount of fiddly tailoring that’s needed to make them (eg the feet and the poppers) yet they’re nearly half the price of the pyjamas – another reason to stick with the onesie, in my opinion!
Suggestions for improvement? Very few, but integral scratch mitts in the smaller sizes might be appreciated by some parents, and non-slip rubber grippity doo-daas on the feet would be useful for the older tots.
]]>Remember that Queen song - ‘Fat Bottomed Girls (you make the rockin’ world go round)’?
It always makes me think of babies in cloth nappies – so much so that it’s become one of our regular bedtime warbles. Whether my 1½ year old son appreciates being called a girl is debatable, but thankfully he’s not old enough to object yet. And the ‘fat bottomed’ moniker is most certainly true – cloth night nappies are bulky. Very bulky.
So it’s great that these super-soft babygrows from Frugi can accommodate a bum the size of a small planet. Babygrows are one of the few items of clothing I’ve found where ‘conventional’ sizing really isn’t up to the cloth nappy challenge. (Oliver struggles to fit into a conventional babygrow even when he’s wearing a ‘sposie – the poor lad obviously takes after me in the tush-and-thigh department.)
Like all Frugi gear, they are fantastically well made, from thick, soft organic cotton. The sizing is generous, but not as mega-generous as some of Frugi’s other clobber. The poppers are nickel-free, so less likely to cause allergies and skin reactions, as well as not contributing to extremely environmentally destructive nickel mining (see http://www.oxfamamerica.org/whatwedo/where_we_work/camexca/news_publications/art7269.html for more info)
I confess to a personal blind spot when it comes to fastening babygrows– it invariably takes me three attempts to line the poppers up correctly, and in the middle of the night, it’s often just too much trouble. Sadly, the innovative folks at Frugi have yet to invent a self-poppering babygrow. They do, however, have kimono-style vests and baby gowns, both of which I wish I’d known about when Oliver was a newborn.
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