Womb to Bloom - Maternity & Beyond

Shopping for baby clothes when you're pregnant can be great fun - so many cute tiny outfits to browse through, fun designs, ultra chic labels, impossibly tiny socks and mittens to marvel over. Once you've filled your basket with enough clothes for the first three months you could be in for a shock at the checkout desk though. You can easily spend more on your baby's first wardrobe that you do on your own clothes in a year, and she'll have grown out of them in three months and need another set, and then another set three months later.

Thrifty, savvy moms-to-be soon catch on to an invaluable resource for stocking up on baby clothes - the thrift store - and if you know your neighbourhoods you can be looking at purchasing designer label baby clothes for next to nothing!

When I was pregnant with our first baby we were on a tight budget and I was determined to prove that this baby wouldn't be too expensive to equip. I was the first of my group of friends and of my family to be pregnant, so wasn't on anyone's hand-me-down list. I hadn't explored thrift stores seriously since I was a student, but we lived not far from a fairly wealthy area that was known as a desirable neighbourhood for well-off ex-yuppie young families. The thrift stores there were a gold mine!  I was able to buy enough clothes, all in good condition, to clothe my baby for his first year and beyond, all for the price of about 6 packs of supermarket babygros.

The secret is to choose thrift stores that are located close to well-off neighbourhoods. Families with new babies who can afford to splurge on good quality baby wear and then get showered with more outfits than their baby can use by fond friends and relatives, often donate bundles of hardly worn clothes to the nearest thrift store, without storing it away for a few years to see if it will be needed again for a second baby. That chic French baby outfit that their auntie just had to get for the little darling will be adorning the rail of the thrift store, marked down to a fraction of its original price and might not even have been worn at all. Babies grow out of things so fast!

Outfits that the thrift store has bothered to hang on a rail may be marked at a higher price, though still only a few dollars, but by rummaging through the bins of mixed up baby clothing you can get the real bargains. You probably won't find everything you want the first or even second time, but with thrift stores perseverance pays off and once you have found a few promising stores you can revisit them every couple of weeks to see what new stuff has come in.

You can have just as much fun shopping for baby clothes in thrift stores, as you do in a big baby store, as you add the thrill of the bargain hunt to the cute factor of poring over tiny baby outfits.

Spending time while you're pregnant building up a selection of clothes for all different ages also pays off in the long run. Once your baby has arrived you won't want to be spending any more time shopping than you have to. The pram probably won't fit into the narrow aisle of the average thrift store and bending over bins to rummage doesn't work with baby in a sling either. So make the most of this preparation time to lay in a good supply of clothes. If you see some pants you like for aged 12-18 months get them; a dress for a 2 year old will look huge compared to the newborn clothes, but time will fly by and you'll be thankful later to have some clothes already put by, when you find your baby has suddenly grown into a toddler.

Only buy things you really like and that are in good condition, then once you approach your due date, get all your bargains out and assess what you've got, to see what you still need for your new baby. If you've overdone the matching outfits and frilly hats and missed out on baby vests, then you still have time to treat yourself to some brand new vests and babygros with all the money you've saved on the rest of the clothes.

Don't forget that you're bound to get more clothes as gifts once the baby arrives too, though people usually choose the smaller size of clothes to give as gifts, so you may want to buy yourself more clothes in the 3-6 months and 6-12 months sizes.

If you get lucky your storage space may start overflowing very quickly. Sort out your finds into ages, then wash and put away the 6-12 months and older clothes for now. Using a big plastic box with a lid keeps them dry and dust free and if you have one box for each age range then you can return them to the box once they've been grown out of, to store them for the next baby.

My thrift store bargains lasted through three babies and some of them even got handed down to friends and cousins with a bit more wear left in them. Not only did my babies have some much fancier clothes than I would have considered buying new, but we were incidentally doing our little bit of environmentally friendly recycling, at the same time as saving money, to make up for a few of those disposable diapers!

So why not go green, save money and check out thrift store chic for your baby. One thing's for sure she's not going to mind dressing in last year's fashions, baby chic is timeless and baby clothes are irresistible to shop for whether new or nearly-new!