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You’ve all been thinking it, so why don’t we just come out and say it: Gerber Onesies are sized incredibly wrong!! I don’t remember this being such a problem five years ago when my son was an infant, but I don’t remember those Onesies saying “Made in India” either.

I have been trying to find the right size for my baby girl (who is 2 mos. old now). The 3-6 mos. size did not fit at all. Got some 6-9 mos. that BARELY fit; they probably won’t work for more than 2 weeks. So I finally bought some 12 mos. which I’m assuming should be sufficient. Even though the package says they are for a 20-24 lb. baby! She weighs 12 lbs! Here’s Gerber’s size chart, as copied from the back of the package of short sleeve Onesies I purchased today:

Now, I am not an unreasonable person. I understand that these sizes are “approximations” based on blah-blah-blah… but they are not even close to the size that they say they should be based on how they are labeled! It’s not even a matter of “oh, well, this baby is bigger than that baby because of x,y,z, etc.” — there are weights and lengths/heights given that are supposed to correspond to a labeled size, but they are totally wrong! e.g. Size 3-6 mos. absolutely does not fit a 12.5 pound baby! Here is how I propose the chart should look like based on my experiences with Gerber Onesies and my daughter:

I have adjusted Gerber’s size chart by three sizes to account for the mislabeling, and to also allow for cotton shrinkage and baby growing. You will notice on my revised chart that Newborn and 0-3 mos. sizes have disappeared; there is no use in buying these smallest sizes unless you have a preemie coming home extremely small. There are also no Onesies that would fit above approx. 28 lbs/32 in. (12,7 kg/81,3 cm) so you may not even want to try.

In contrast, I have come to really appreciate Carter’s and its offshoot brands (Just One Year at Target and Child of Mine at Walmart). Their plain/colored “bodysuits” (the Onesie equivalent, without copyright infringement) are more expensive than Gerber’s; depending on where you purchase them, a 5-pack could cost $6-$14 more than Gerber Onesies. However, if you can manage to hit some sales and/or stack on some coupons, you can get more value out of the Carter’s for around the same price. In my humble opinion, Carter’s bodysuits seem to be of a higher quality both in material and construction, which gives them a better resale/hand-me-down value by far. The label-to-size chart that they use/provide is also much more acurate to how their clothes actually fit.

I doubt that I will ever completely forsake Gerber Onesies in lieu of Carter’s bodysuits, as I have a lot of respect for the Gerber brand as a whole. But I find the sizing issues very frustrating, and the huge gaps in “age”-to-”size” estimates seem really unreasonable. More importantly, these recent problems have cost my family money in non-returnable merchandise on more than one occassion, which I must admit makes me hesitant to continue purchasing those items.