The moment we found out we were pregnant with twins, we began to get what I call the “doomsday” stories or comments.  Everyone was determined that my little ones would come early.  I became determined that they wouldn’t.  I followed doctor’s orders and even created my own precautions.  My husband became the main cleaner in the household.  I rested twice a day starting at about 23-25 weeks.  I ate what I was supposed to and avoided excessive exercise and activity.  But still, being the planner that I am, I began to gather a few preemie clothes together just in case.  When my son’s water broke at 28 weeks (something I had not thought of when I was considering the “premature” scenario) I was glad that I had stored some preemie clothes away.

What I found when I began searching for preemie clothes was that they are hard to find.  When you do find them, they are often very expensive, which is crazy since they would probably be only used for about a month or two depending on how early they are born.  While I was on bed rest for three weeks in the hospital, I searched for preemie clothes online so that I could have some clothes ready for them when they were born.  I wanted to share some of the best deals that found so I can hopefully make your job searching for preemie clothes easier.  If your little ones come early, the less you have to worry about the better.

If you are not opposed to clothes that are gently used, I found some great deals for you.  Once you get the clothes home, you can wash them once or twice to be sure they are clean.  The best place I found to buy preemie clothes was online auctions.  You can buy clothes in lots, meaning you buy many outfits at one time.  I was able to even find some boy/girl twin lots that I paid less than $20 for 5 outfits each with some hats and socks included.  They were adorable and hardly looked worn.  In fact, one outfit still had the tags attached.

You can check a local Good Will for preemie clothes as well.  This way you can view them in person and see what kind of condition they are in.  If you don’t have a lot of money to spend on preemie clothes, check with pregnancy counseling centers in your area.  They often have a clothes closet and will give you the clothes.  You can then donate them back when you no longer need them to help someone else.

If you must have brand new preemie clothes, I found the most affordable preemie clothes at Wal-Mart.  They have a good amount of clothes to choose from and they are adorable!  They cost an average of $5 each and they have sleepers, gowns, onesies and pants among other articles of clothing.  Baby Gap and Gymboree also carry preemie clothes and, if you can catch them on sale, you can get really good deals as well.

I did find a few other sites online where you can purchase preemie clothes.  They were all very sweet, but they tended to range between $20-$40.  I wanted to get more bang for my buck and have plenty of outfits for the NICU as they changed clothes there 2-3 times/day depending on what they were doing that day.  However, we did splurge on the going home outfits!

I hope that this helps you in your search for preemie clothes for you multiples.  Even if your pregnancy is going well, you all know that the higher the number of children you are carrying, the greater the risk for an early delivery.  It doesn’t hurt to keep a few articles of clothing on hand just in case.  Hopefully you will never need them.  If you do, then you are ahead of the game.  If you don’t, you can donate them to a program that helps pregnant moms who might not be able to afford purchasing preemie clothes for their babies.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 10th, 2006 at 4:20 am and is filed under Multiples. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.