It may sound crazy but I have started a collection of baby clothes years and years ago. I don’t go out of my way to specifically buy them, but if I see something that catches my eye I have to have it. I have all sorts of things-for either gender and of all sizes. I should probably note that I have NO children! lol (TTC#1 soon though)
I am not necessarily superstitious, but I do believe in waiting to find out the gender, reveal the name, etc. so I feel like buying clothes prematurely does go against that…I guess I just figure I’ll have at least one of each eventually. The only time I feel really crazy is when I think about how quickly they grow and how wasteful nice, new, expensive baby clothes are. I just can’t resist!!
I also feel like when the time does come I will want to pick out the clothes myself, but how exactly do you tell people to not get you clothes-everyone loves shopping for baby clothes!!??
Anyway, has anyone else started a clothing collection pre-conception? lol
I buy cute baby clothes on sale, but I never save them. I keep them in a special little closet. Then when a friend or acquaintance has a shower, or a new baby is born, I “go shopping” in my closet, and gift them. [name_u]Baby[/name_u] clothes are fun to buy!
I didn’t buy any clothes for my son before he was born. We used hand-me-downs from my nephew and gifts from friends and family. And if this baby turns out to be a girl, I have nothing for her, either. But I’m sure my [name_f]MIL[/name_f]/ sister/ [name_m]SIL[/name_m]'s will take care of that pretty quickly! I also have a neighbor across the street who promised me all of her girl stuff if/when I need it.
If you don’t want to be gifted with baby clothes, just have a diaper shower. Specifically state on the invites you want diapers and large-ticket items only. People will comply… for the most part. 
Unfortunately, unless people specifically ask what they should get you (thereby indicating that they want to get you something), I don’t think there is any polite way to state what you would or would not like to receive as a present.
People don’t have to get you a present just because you had a baby (or for any other reason), so to me it comes off as rude to make any statement which assumes that they were going to (including ‘no presents please’). Except for maybe your direct family, you might say something to them. Otherwise I think you should just take the clothes if people decide that they want to give you clothes, smile and say thankyou, remember to put baby in the clothes and take a photo at least once to show them. You can still shop for clothes yourself and you don’t really have to use things you don’t like / things that are impractical.
I don’t have any clothes stashed away, but I trust I will get a whole shipment from my sisters-in-law after having a baby, so I don’t think I’ll have to do a lot of shopping! I do love buying things for friends’ babies, and although I hope the parents like them and dress the baby in them, I know that new parents do receive a lot of clothes, I just enjoy baby clothes - I think everyone does, really! I always give books for older children (older than 1) as it is my opinion that a child can certainly have too many clothes or toys, but can never have too many books!
Edit: Oh yeah, I forgot about the American ‘shower’ thing. This custom makes me extremely uncomfortable and if I was invited to one I don’t think I could help being offended deep down, the idea of demanding presents just makes me cringe. But cultural differences and all that! I know it’s not seen that way in America So it’s probably possible to specify what presents you want if you have one of those.
You can’t avoid it. Well-meaning relatives will inevitably send you a huge bag of clothes you hate, lol. Like you said, they outgrow them quickly. My plan is to take pics of baby in the aforementioned clothes and send them to the people who gifted me the clothes.
Plus side, there are lots of amazing consignment stores who will buy unused or barely used clothes.
Oh, I totally get what you mean! I’m going through the same thing at the moment. DH and I started a baby box when we got married [name_f]April[/name_f] last year, after some friends suggested that it was a good idea. Now we’re about to start TTC on the 30th (YAY!), and our baby box has morphed into 2 large boxes and a little box filled with all kinds of stuff… [name_u]Baby[/name_u] shopping is addictive! My Mum knows about our boxes, and has even been contributing little gifts now and then, but no one else knows.
I know that we’ll most likely get a lot of clothes from family, but I figure, well we may have more than one child. Also, I have 5 siblings (youngest who is 2), and my DH has 3 siblings, none of whom are married or have kids, so we can always pass everything down to them. I have also left the tags on everything, just in case we gift them if someone has a baby before us.
I guess that’s all you can really do 
mulme944 - That’s a good idea
jackal- It’s not that I would be ungrateful or that I wouldn’t like what they pick out-I just enjoy picking out clothes so much myself! The Shower thing is a little funny, but it’s such a norm that I can’t help but have one and get used to the idea. The good thing is we all make registries (usually at the same one or two big baby stores all over the country) so I can specify exactly what I want and return the rest, or duplicates. I can understand how it comes off as rude in other cultures but I take it as you know exactly what the parent wants and I personally would much rather get something useful from someone else and think of them every time I use it (such as a rocker or baby bath) and have fun getting the small stuff that they’ll outgrow.
moonkai - good plan…I’ll have to make a note and place it with the outfit to remind me who to send the picture to.
sunkissedchild - Yay! [name_f]Glad[/name_f] I’m not the only one! I have only have a drawer at my house and only my husband knows…But there is a big box or two I have to pick up from my parents from when I started collecting when I still lived with them :0 It will be fun to look through some of the first outfits I bought-I’m sure many of them I won’t even like or want to keep at this point!! Haha
I know my mom also saved a box of her favorite baby clothes that I wore. Not sure if she plans on giving it to me or not but it could be cute to play “Who wore it Best?” Haha
People in the U.S. have differing views on baby showers and etiquette too. In my experience, baby shower registries hardly ever contain clothes because the mother knows she’ll get a ton anyway. No one is going to get super excited about buying you a changing pad, you know? The registry is nice, but no one has to go by it. You may even find yourself less concerned with a certain style of outfits once the baby’s here! I totally understand pre-buying clothes though. They’re just too cute.
If you don’t want baby clothes, don’t announce the sex ahead of time. People will still buy you baby clothes, but you won’t be as inundated. [name_m]Don[/name_m]'t register for baby clothes. People mostly won’t buy the clothes you register for, but they will take the presence of clothes on your registry as an indication that yes, you do want baby clothes. Leave the tags on the clothes that you do not love and either regift them or return them for store credit. If people ask if you want hand-me-downs, just say, no thank you, we already have all of the clothes that we need. Consider having just a diaper shower or just a children’s book shower.
We have bought our son outfits for high holidays, other than that, everything has been hand-me-downs. Many of our friends gave us huge bags filled with baby clothes with the tags still on. Most babies do not get a chance to work their way through their vast wardrobes before they outgrow them. If you end up getting loads of clothes, just say thank you and pass them on. We were thrilled to not have to buy clothes for our son for the first nearly three years now. Someone will be very happy to outfit their kid in the stuff you don’t want.
Finally, remember that babies need new clothes every three months or so. You will get to be in charge of picking these out for at least the first couple of years, at which point your child may well assert his or her very strong fashion sense that will directly oppose your very strong fashion sense. But you will still have loads of baby clothes buying opportunities!
tarynkay - Good point. I’m always looking for more reasons to back up my decision on keeping the gender a surprise.
I am very aware there are bigger issues and so many more important things to worry about or be in control of than what your child is wearing…It’s more of just a fun, enjoyable experience I’m looking forward to I’ll be more than happy to pass (most of) the clothes down to friends/family/those in need afterwards.
I don’t think there is any polite way to ask for people not to buy you clothes. We didn’t register for a single outfit and got so many clothes we hardly bought anything for our son until he reached the 9 month sized stuff. It was better with my daughter because we didn’t have a shower. We got a handful of gifts for her but I got to do lots of clothing shopping for her, which was really fun since in my opinion there are more cute girl clothes.
If you really don’t like what somebody gives you don’t feel like you have to use it. You can take it to a consignment shop and sell it to them and get store credit to buy something else in it’s place. I didn’t do this with anything at first for my son but at a certain point I stopped caring if this was rude and now it’s my method of dealing with unwanted clothes (I hate clothes with characters on them that my kids don’t even know). Also some people may give you a gift receipt and you can return them for full price.
Another thing to keep in mind with baby clothes is they go through so many so quickly! Especially if they grow fast. My son was in 18 month clothes by his first birthday and my daughter was in 24 month clothes! A lot of clothes that I loved they hardly got a chance to wear. Also you can get nice quality clothes used for great prices.
One last thing is that you can’t necessarily count on having a boy and a girl. I had a friend who finally after her last boy had to give away a bunch of girls clothes she’d collected over the years. However I don’t know if this is an absolute negative since you can then at least have the fun experience of shopping for girls’ clothes if you don’t have one and if they have tags you could always give them to friends or family who have a boy/girl.
Luckily, I’m around multiple babies right now, so I buy stuff for them if I see it. If I love something, I give it to them. I guess I’m a little superstitious in a way, so I worry about buying baby clothes to hold onto (sort of like the superstition about trying on a wedding dress before you are engaged).
[name_u]Baby[/name_u] showers can be pretty different depending on your region, parent’s age/status, etc. Some people make registries, and whether people actually follow the registry is 50/50. The ones I’ve been to, all big ticket items are bought by the family (in addition to cute clothes), while friends tend to buy smaller things like the clothes, pacifiers, sippy cups, etc. Like some of the others said, I don’t think there’s any polite way to say no clothes. For one, it sort of takes that shopping joy away and puts extra focus on the presents. Second, you might just end up with one thousand sippy cups instead lol (or people will still buy you clothes). If there’s something you don’t like you can find somewhere to sell it or return it. I wish more people included gift receipts for that very reason! There’s also something really wonderful in letting people have the freedom in picking presents because you never know what you will get. Some of the best baby shower gifts I’ve seen have been sentimental ones- the music box that the mother had on her crib when she was a baby, a sweater that had been handmade by a grandmother, handmade blankets, etc. When you start getting specific, you may lose out on those.
feberin - I hate clothing with characters too!
I know I should be careful on buying gender specific things…I may just be jinxing myself! The last few things I bought were actually gender neutral onesies with owls
ottertails - interesting point about the wedding dress (but I did that too haha) :0
I am Preggo!!! All of that baby-clothes-hoarding will pay off soon!! I actually convinced DH to bring me to the baby store tonight so we can buy something together to celebrate finding out. We didn’t buy any clothes, just those stickers with the # of weeks to put on your belly when you’re taking belly pictures. I’m going to try really hard to not find out the gender so I’ll be sticking to gender-neutral newborn clothing
Congrats! And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with buying yourself baby things before you’re pregnant. For me, it was cloth diapers. I started my stash when we were TTC, and it was oddly comforting to me in a way that counteracted the stress of the TWWs and all that. We all have our own weird things!
Also I totally get not wanting people to buy you baby clothes. My in laws (parents and siblings, with 5 grand kids/nieces/nephews between them) have much different tastes in kid clothing than I do and I know I’m going to be stuck having to dress the baby in whatever they buy at least when we’re around them. I would so much rather buy all the clothes myself, but oh well! This isn’t just a baby thing but an entire childhood one, as you know there will be all sorts of birthday and [name_u]Christmas[/name_u] gifts in the form of unwanted clothing! Guess we have to get used to it.
I know someone who put on their registry in the notes section “Gift cards welcome for apparel purchases” They didn’t have one ounce of clothing on their registry and decided to ask for gift cards instead so they could pick. I am like you where I am very specific on what clothes I like for a future bub. I hate items with words like “Daddy’s [name_f]Princess[/name_f]” or clothing with animals etc. I don’t think its being ungrateful I just think you have something specific in mind in how you would like to dress your child. If you get clothes because it seems natural for people to just want to pick out that cute baby outfit then just say thank you and do with what you would like with them. It is like a wedding registry sometimes people just go off and buy what they like for you. And we gladly accepted it. Also just based off bridal shower a lot of the people gave us the receipt just in case.
I bought a few things and we are TTC our first now. I know some people think it is bad luck but I dont see it that way.
I am guilty of buying baby clothes before I was even pregnant. To be quite frank, I wasn’t even sure that I was even going to get pregnant with my age, so it was more for fun. : ) But as soon as I found out the gender of my baby, I started going to Babies R Us, Target, and [name_u]Carter[/name_u]'s to buy baby clothes. I attempted to make some outfits for [name_f]Eva[/name_f] as well, but that didn’t go so well!
I’d definitely encourage you to take hand-me-downs. [name_u]Free[/name_u] clothes! You can keep what you like and pass the rest on or consign/donate them. I was pleasantly surprised with a lot of the second-hand stuff we got.
My weakness is baby clothes! What we did with both of our boys was have a diaper shower instead of a baby shower. It was absolutely fantastic. My best friend arranged it, and she gave everyone a size diaper to buy, so when we got there we literally had two truckloads of diapers in an array of sizes. I never bought a single diaper for DS1. And only a couple packs for DS2. A few people included onesies, socks, and other stuff, which we certainly didn’t mind, but for the most part we just got diapers. I’m hoping we do it again for #3. And with all the money we saved on diapers, we could afford to pick out all the clothes. 
To tell you the truth, I have two adorable girl onesies because I’m hoping so bad for this baby to be a girl.
Thanks everyone. I’m glad I’m not the only one haha
dewdropsandroses- Great Idea! I’m going to have to mention this to my mom/sister/best friend. I was actually hoping to compromise with DH (I like the idea of cloth diapers but he can’t even stand the thought) and buy earth-friendly/chemical free/organic-yet-disposable-diapers like those from the “Honest Company” but they are even more expensive. So this idea would be great!