Nine long months of pregnancy all lead to the one big day when your baby is born and you finally get to meet the person that you’ve been waiting for! To have the smoothest experience possible, we like to plan ahead for whatever we need to bring to the hospital to make our stay comfortable and help get our baby home safely. Down here in the South, it can get HOT for much of the year so it’s a definitely a good idea to think about what your summer baby should wear home from the hospital.
For most situations, you’ll want to dress your summer baby in a simple short-sleeved onesie and socks when leaving the hospital. Be sure to keep hats, blankets, and other layers handy in case the air conditioning makes things too cold. By using layers, you can always add or subtract as needed.
It can be overwhelming to make decisions when you have a new baby – there will be a lot of them! By putting some thought into your hospital bag and going home outfits ahead of time, you’ll save yourself some stress. Let’s dive into a few considerations for summer babies.
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What should my summer baby wear home from the hospital
The first thing that should be said about summer outfits for a newborn is that you shouldn’t worry about it too much in general. In an effort to make everything as perfect as possible, it’s easy to go overboard and compensate too far one way or another. By keeping it simple and being prepared with a few options, you’ll be able to handle most situations easily.
Don’t forget that just because you have a due date doesn’t mean that’s when you’ll be in the hospital. Start looking at the weather ahead of time in case your baby decides to show up early! During the early or later parts of the summer, temperatures can fluctuate wildly and sometimes it will catch you off guard.
Unless you don’t have air conditioning, it will be colder than you think
While it’s easy to freak out about extreme temperatures, the reality is that most places you’ll have your newborn in from birth will have some kind of air conditioning cranked up to the maximum. When it comes to what a summer baby should wear home from the hospital, it’s probably a better question to ask what an air conditioned baby should be wearing home.
With that in mind, you should plan your newborn wardrobe around room temperature and not worry too much about the rest. Based on my personal experience, the two hospitals that my babies were born in were flat out COLD while we were there and half the time we were worried about them staying WARM!
Of course, if you are anticipating an extended stay outside, whether it be the walk to the car or even walking home with your baby if you don’t have a car in the city, then you’ll need to keep the clothing light and focus on protecting your baby from the sun. In these situations, a car seat/stroller combo with a thick cover or umbrella will probably be your best bet.
Be sure to check on your baby frequently and look for sweat forming on her head as that’s the only place babies can sweat from during the first few months. If your baby was premature, she might not even be able to sweat at all so you’ll need to look for red skin, irritability, and a sunken soft spot on her head as signs of overheating and dehydration. For long trips, it would be highly recommended to arrange for some kind of air-conditioned transportation to avoid risks to your newborn!
The best kind of outfit to bring your baby home in from the hospital during the summer
This is probably a good time to mention that a lot of parents, especially first-time parents, are anxious to get their new babies into the super cute outfits they have been obsessing over for the last nine months. This includes fancy dresses, little suits, tiny baseball hats, shoes, and other gear. While adorable, you should probably skip the fancy stuff when it comes to the first trip home from the hospital with a summer baby. In reality, it’s going to be difficult to dress your baby in these and they probably won’t be very comfortable either.
With that said, plan to dress your baby in a diaper, simple short-sleeved or long-sleeved onesie, and socks.
Here are some items that you should have at your disposal in case you need to add them into the mix:
- Simple beanie style hats that fit but aren’t too tight
- Headbands with or without a bow
- Longer socks
- Pants
- Receiving blankets
- Extra onesies in different sizes just in case
- Backup socks (I’ve never met a baby that can keep a sock on for longer than three seconds)
Here are a few things you DON’T need to worry about:
- Shoes
- Jackets
- Any kind of bulky, one-piece suit
- Heavy blankets
What else should be in the hospital bag for baby during the summer?
In general, you’ll need to worry more about what to put in your hospital bag to keep mom and dad comfortable than you will the baby because her needs will be pretty basic at first. The hospital will provide a lot of the essentials and your baby just won’t be able to do much other than eat and sleep at first. Here’s a list of what we brought to the hospital when our son was born last year:
- Car seat – Although this won’t be in your bag per se, it definitely belongs on the top of the list because it’s so important. In fact, most hospitals will refuse to even let you leave your room without proving that you have a proper car seat pre-installed
- Clothes – All of the clothes and outfits for bringing the baby home from the hospital in the summer that I mentioned earlier
- Pacifiers – If you want to have a couple of pacifiers on hand, that’s fine. Personally, our son never cared for them, but every baby is different! Usually, the hospital will provide these as well.
- Bottles and formula – If you choose to feed your baby formula from the beginning, be sure to pack at least two bottles and your preferred brand of formula. Of course, breastfeeding is HIGHLY recommended in all cases unless there is a physical complication that prevents you from doing so.
- Diapers – Although the hospital will likely provide these, and usually give you some freebies to take home as well, it’s a good idea to pack a few anyway. Hospitals usually only have size 1 diapers available so if you are expecting a tiny baby, plan ahead.
- Wipes – Same as the diapers, the hospital will usually provide these. Usually, they carry your standard Huggies or Pampers wipes, however, that might have something in them that irritates your baby. For that reason, it’s a good idea to have a high quality, natural baby wipe at the ready!
Something else to consider that isn’t really in your bag is the contact information for your baby’s pediatrician. With our third child, we already had a pediatrician in place for the girls so we knew this right away, but you might not realize that the hospital needs a place to forward your baby’s medical information to and they will want you to go ahead and set up your first appointments as soon as possible (3 to 5 days after birth is pretty standard).
Hopefully, by now you know what a baby should wear home from the hospital in the summer and you will be able to put together a game plan for a smooth trip home. Let us know how everything went or chime in with your own recommendations in the comments below!
