The clothing top-bottom gap

I’m not a fan of the top – bottom gap between trousers and top.  I don’t like it on myself (the thought of showing knickers or worse ‘builder’s bum’ is horrendous!), but I don’t like it on babies either.  Vests are so cute, even in plain white, that why you wouldn’t keep their little bodies toasty in them I don’t know.

But there’s a problem with this – discounting the overheating in the summer problem – we’ve pretty much run out of vest sizes.

N has a long body compared with his legs so we always have to move up a top size and vest size earlier than trousers.  But what I can’t understand is how quickly vests (and when he was in sleepsuits, those too) shrink.  Basically after one 40 degree quick wash they can sometimes be coming up a lot smaller than they were during the first wear when you’d expect them to have stretched a bit.  It seems to happen with all brands – M&S, Mothercare, supermarket ones, and yet adult clothes don’t seem to do the same.  Very odd.

So he’s now wearing age 2-3 sleeveless ones (he’s in 18-24 pjs and clothes, with some shorts 12-18 as the waist on the bigger trousers tend to be too big) at 16 months old.  He doesn’t look like he’s not got a totally out of proportion body to legs but that’s what the sizes of toddler clothes would suggest.  But 2-3 is the biggest vest size and I searched everywhere for those, only finding them in Tesco.

I have found now though, that he seems to be quite happy wandering round with only one layer, so at the moment he’s got that gap.  It’s not quite so offensive now, although I do wonder whether he gets a draughty midriff!  Not a good look when it’s a bit gangster hip hop trouser style with the top of his nappy showing as the trouser waist droops down.  At least having only just moved up a clothing size, his t-shirts are all a decent length, but once he grows a bit we’ll struggling on body length again.

Come the colder weather, I’m going to have to locate some of the ‘old man’ style vests for him in a long body length otherwise he’s going to have gaps galore.  Let’s hope his body shape evens out as he grows.