Sizing up baby clothes
The sizes for baby clothes are generally stated as newborn, 0-3 months, 3-6 months, 6-9 months, and 9-12 months. It's usually safe to assume that a newborn can wear newborn or 0-3 month baby clothing, but if the baby is born larger than or smaller than the average birth rate for newborns, the newborn sizes of baby clothes may not fit.
Back in Aunt Abby's childbearing days there was an old wives' tale that you could guess a baby's birth weight pretty accurately based on the amount of weight the mom gained during pregnancy. That's really not true but some people really believed it.
There are some nifty medical diagnosis tools that are used during pregnancy these days, such as sonograms, that tell a doctor about how big a baby might be at delivery. Although these estimates aren't 100% right, they can give you some clue as to whether the baby will be able to wear newborn sized baby clothes at birth.
When babies are born small, they can always grow into newborn baby clothes so that's usually not a problem. The problem comes about when you've got a bunch of newborn or 0-3 month sized baby clothes and the baby is born too big to wear them.
Aunt Abby's best advice is, keep your receipts when you buy newborn baby clothes. Unless they were bought on clearance, you can usually return the baby clothes and exchange them for a larger size.
