To think shops shouldn't charge for 'tiny baby' clothes

[hiss42]

Looking at baby clothes in boots today (i'm sure lots of other places do them). They had tiny tiny vests suitable for 3lb babies that they were charging £8 for! And it had a tag on them that said the front opening for hospital wires. Horrible.

I've just found them online and the hospital wires tag isn't on them, it's now described as:
"Low Birth Weight Jacket features a friendly bear print, a wrapover front and opens flat with soft velcro fastenings to the front and sleeves to make dressing the little chap much easier."

If you 3lb baby is so ill in hospital it has tubes and wires, It's criminal to charge £8 for something for them to wear!

YABU

Of course shops should charge for their goods.

Don't be ridiculous.

YABVU, the vests you are referring to are rather specialist (with the openings you mentioned) therefore will cost a fair bit more to manufacture than your standard size newborn vests.

As others have said, they should definitely not be free! Can you imagine how Boots would police it - "Erm, excuse me Madam, could you please prove you have a premature (and therefore possibly very poorly) baby before we give you your free stuff?" How ridiculous!

My Godmother knits for premies in hospital. She does special hats with flaps for wires. Other people knit cardies etc. Some people even donate their own milk. All their own time, money etc to help people out in a distressing time. You belittle that with your ridiculous sense of entitlement.

What a strange thread. Weird.

they shouldn't be free, that's ridiculous.

but they shouldn't be ridiculously over-priced. £8 for a vest is daylight robbery, esp when you consider that you can buy packs of them for newborns for about £4

it does strike me rather that companies see a way of making a quick buck for things like this.

same as car seats and pushchairs for disabled children... 2 or 3 times the price of regular ones.
it's disgusting

Can I just say, as an aside to the OP, that the people who knit and donate to neonatal are absolutely fabulous.

It's wonderful to know in such circumstances that there are people thinking about your baby and wanting to help. They are all very much appreciated.

DS was in hospital and full of wires when he was 8 weeks old - should he have been provided with free clothes for that time?

Pricing is a tricky one... I suspect the issue with tiny baby clothes and disabled car seats being more expensive is that fewer are made and sold and so the unit price is accordingly higher as the same economies of scale don't come into play. It feels inherently unfair that the parents of tiny babies or disabled children end up paying more, but presumably the alternative is companies selling their products at a loss, which is unsustainable, and would lead to no products for disabled children or premature babies being made? I wouldn't have thought companies are putting an extra mark up on those products?

thisisyesterday, correct me if I'm wrong but are specialist pushchairs / carseats for disabled children more specialist / complicated / supportive or something? Could this be why they are a lot more expensive as they require a lot more in terms of manufacture .etc?

Give the OP a break, please. On a purely commercial level, what she is suggesting might have some business potential. Free baby clothes could make for an ideal loss-leader... as in, if I were to pop into Boots to pick up my free set of 3lb sleepsuits and vests worth £8, I might whilst I was at it but myself some nipple cream and bubble bath worth £10, and might then have developed such a sense of brand loyalty that I'd go into Boots when I was ready for newborn size, and then for 0-3month size. Etc.

The free clothes could be made available only upon receipt of a voucher provided by and signed by a NICU or paeds ward staff member. That would ensure that premature or sick babies and kids of all sizes would be eligible, and only the parents/carers of eligible children would benefit.

Some places charge astronomically for tiny baby clothes, but then that same place charges astronomically for slightly bigger clothes too.........

I think the sentiment came from a good place. My little girl was born at 25 wks and at just over 1b and she grew slowly so yes she did need tiny tiny babygros. Which the hospital did provide if we wanted, but one of the ways of feeling like your baby was your own when you don't get to take them home is to get them some of their own clothes. There's so few things you can have control over. The practicalities of the velcro flaps for tubes is VERY neccessary and I had a little blub in Boots the other day when I was looking at the baby clothes and saw one of these. They are so very tiny and it makes me remember a year ago when things were very different. But I digress.

Also wanted to say that while it is AMAZING that people are prepared to knit lovely things for babies, our scbu was inundated with woolly things that well meaning people had knitted..in very scratchy wool so would never get used. Prem babies skin is so very delicate. We had boxes of the stuff and the nurses told me they would rather have toys or donations of other things than hand knitted stuff. Just an insight.

do you think smarties should be free as well, they are small

how about sweeteners for your tea, they are even smaller

lol

Absolutely ridiculous post.

Oh and just to make myself clear, the hospitals provided clothes for the babies to use while they were IN there but my daughter came home at just under 4lbs in her own stuff. Which we bought obviously. Probably at an extortionate amount for a tiny scrap of cloth but well, I am a size 14 and I pay for clothes the same price as those at a size 8 so it's all fair really.

I can see this from both sides really.
My son was born weighing 1lb 8oz and my daughter was bron weighing 3lb 4oz.
My son was well enough to be in clothes when he weighed 1lb 5 (his weight dropped dramatically and he took ages to gain) and my daughter was in clothes from 2lb 12oz.
The prem baby clothes were significantly more expensive than the newborn clothes even though they were essentially the same - I do understand that the ones with monitor access etc require more making so will be more expensive.
So I do think they should be more similarly priced to normal baby clothes but certainly not free.

You could be right, WiiFit - presumably more technology goes into a very supportive carseat.

The loss leader point could be a good one, actually - when I picked up my Bounty pack (which I appreciate doesn't actually cost Boots anything) I probably spent another tenner on bits while I was in there.

My 2lber loved his mini clothes I bought from boots and the openings for wires did make life easier.

Not sure if you think they should be free, or what?

Shopping for clothes is one of the few things mums of premature babies can do, given that we've been robbed of the best bit of pregnancy, never got round to decorating a nursery etc.

I know the mothercare range open out completely and velcro shut, the label is on the outside and it can be washed at 95% despite being all cotton.
There is a lot of work done with NICU to produce these size clothes- for example, finding out where to put the openings on a particular size item so that wires can come through for essential monitors. Also the price of essential commodities has shot through the roof this past couple of years, especially wheat and cotton due to poor harvests. That will factor in to the cost.

Plus it is trickier to sew smaller items as any needleworker will tell you.

OP you are being entirely unreasonable, and to suggest them as a loss leader that people will buy other stuff when they are in the store- they won't. They want to be in and out as quickly as possible to get back to their sick child as soon as possible.

Eh? EH??

Of course YABU! You think that companies should make small baby clothes free? You think that a label indicating that the hole could be used for wires in a hospital is, what? Insulting? Insensitive? So, it couldn't be just useful then?

If you think that a retailer charging for baby clothes is "criminal" you must be incandescent with rage about important things in life!

Hospitals provide clothes for prem babies while they are in hospital, unless the parents want to provide them instead. For our part we let the hospital sort things. With a toddler at home and a critically ill and very very early baby, washing tiny clothes was one job too many for us. We only bought clothes when he came home.

If you want to get angry about something, it would be better aimed at the lack of financial support for parents of very sick babies. Trips of over an hour to hospital, hospital canteen meals, parking and time off work put many families at financial breaking point. And when I had my ds, I didn't even get the 'health in pregnancy' grant that mothers of full term babies were then entitled to, because you have to claim after the 25th week of pregnancy but before the baby is born - and by 25 weeks I was in labour. That really felt like adding insult to injury.

Amen to that Libelulle, that is criminal.

OP you seem to be coming from a very sensitive place DP I wouldn't flame you, big as other have pointed out, it isn't logical.

Weird idea. DS was 1lb 4oz and I did buy him a few tiny things when he was ready for clothes which was earlier than I thought as we changed hospitals to one that dressed babies in incubators. But I didn't have to buy them, the hospital provided. As others said I really wanted him to be in his own clothes because it made him more 'mine'.

Some companies do seem to charge a fortune for pointless items- what SCBU baby is going to wear socks? I haven't seen the Boots ones but Mothercare stuff I found good. It was reasonably priced and easy to get on and off around CPAP, drips, monitor wires etc.