Expert mother's guide to: Buying Baby Clothes

Your new baby will grow so fast through the first year of life. You will probably find yourself looking for new baby clothes every time you go to the store. Or, if you are like me, you already bought a year's worth of clothes before baby was even born, and baby was only able to fit into about half of them in the right season. Either way, here are some tips to remember when purchasing baby clothes.

Set a budget

How much can you really afford to spend on baby clothes? How many clothes does baby really need? Can you get something equally cute and good quality for a better price somewhere else? These are all questions you should answer before blowing a wad on baby clothes. Sure they are cute, but they will only get worn for a few months tops when the baby is so little and growing so fast.

Make sure it fits

There are only so many clothes that a baby will wear in a certain size before he or she will outgrow them. Many moms have so many baby clothes that the baby doesn't even wear all of them before growing into the next size.

Don't buy too many clothes in advance. You just can't tell if your baby will fit in a certain size for another two days or another two months. It is better to buy baby clothes as you need them. You also don't know what size he or she will be wearing when the next season comes. My daughter had about 15 three month old dresses. She only wore about half of them because she had a growth spurt when she was three months old.

Don't remove the tags from clothes that were given to baby until you wash them for baby to wear. The reason for this is that most baby stores will happily exchange baby outfits for different sizes if the tags are still attached. If it doesn't fit baby now, by the time it does fit will the outfit be appropriate for the season? Figure out how much baby weighs and how tall baby is. When deciding on a size to by, go by weight and height rather than the month-size recommendations.

Coordinated color scheme

If most of your baby's outfits consist of two matching colors, it will be much easier to put together a great looking outfit. Maybe even Daddy could do it! It will also be nice to have several pants that match a shirt and vise versa. Babies get dirty a lot. If you have to change baby's pants and still want the outfit to look good with out changing baby's shirt to match a new pair of pants, it will be convenient to have several pants in the same color scheme.

For girls, it will also be nice to get at least one bracelet and one hair bow that will match several outfits. If your outfits don't all go together, you will need several hair bows and several bracelets, and possibly several shoes to go with each outfit.

Get baby uniform white socks. That way you won't be chasing around unmatched socks, or spend a lot of time matching up different colored socks. If they are all the same, you just match baby sock to baby sock and the laundry gets done much quicker.