Well, I can’t begin to tell you all there is to know about organic clothing for your baby or child, so I’m not going to try. What I can offer you are some suggestions. If you’ve been wondering what the current buzz around organically grown cottons and other fibers is all about, it’s worth the time to do a little bit of research. You’ll be surprised at what you’ll learn!

By now, I think it’s been pretty well drilled into most of us that we need to read labels and pay attention to the ingredients in the foods we feed our kids. Although there are endless arguments over how much it all matters, how much is too much, and even which ingredients we do and don’t need to limit or avoid, most of us are at least listening. And we should! We need to pay attention, hear the arguments, do our own research, etc., but most of all, know our kids and make the best decisions for them.

It was only a matter of time before the focus of research was expanded to things like clothing. Natural fibers, of course, are subject to some of the same influences in their early stages that our farmed foods are. Then they have processing routines that they go through that also involve exposure to chemicals and other processes that may change the fibers or add to them. Research shows that some of these changes and additions may be exposing us to things we’re better to avoid.

If you’re like me, I often turn off the computer in disgust when I go digging for information. I have to walk away because I start to feel that the only way to get away from everything they say is bad would be to zip myself up in a bubble! I’m sure some of you have gotten to that point. However, I do believe I’m better off having the knowledge and making an informed decision.

As I said earlier, part of this whole process is knowing your child. They are all different and have different needs. We need to focus on the needs that are the top priority for the child. This amounts to weighing the pros and cons in deciding whether or not to eliminate something from their diet, environment, etc.

The benefits of organic clothing include simple comfort for baby, environmental benefits and even health benefits. From my own personal experience, I can tell you that organic baby clothes and bedding are the softest, richest feeling garments you’ll put next to your skin. There is no doubt you’ll agree once you’ve held one for yourself. I know I tell my kids all the time, “we don’t look with our hands, we look with our eyes.” I’m making an exception here! The next time you’re shopping and see the organic clothing section, don’t just look from afar. Touch them and feel the difference.

Regarding health benefits, I’m no doctor or scientist, but I have my own experience that I can share. As an adult, I have developed ‘Allergic Contact Dermatitis’. In certainly non-scientific terms, I developed this condition through prolonged exposure to something in my environment that I was sensitive or allergic to. The areas of my skin which had more exposure would flare up worse and more often than the areas with less exposure. This is something that develops over time until your skin “has had enough”, so to speak.

It’s well under control now by restricting the substances that I come into contact with, but initially it was no picnic. It’s often difficult to find products that I can use, and certainly inconvenient many times trying to avoid my known allergens, or worse yet, things with unknown ingredients. However, it’s worth it to live with no flare ups!

What does this have to do with baby clothes? Well, since I was a baby, I have always had extremely sensitive skin. I learned to live with the endless little rashes that would seem to come from nowhere and then just go away. It was nothing grotesque, just little annoying patches of itchy red skin that would come and go. It was never anything that you could pinpoint and the doctors just said some people have more sensitive skin. As a young adult, I would still get the little itchy rashes and other weird skin flare ups, but I also developed extremely dry skin on my hands. Several years later, when I was pregnant with my second child, it got much worse. In fact, my skin was so tough that the nurse made several failed attempts to put the line into the back of my hand while I was in the delivery room. She had to have someone bring her some other heavy duty something or other just to be able to stab through it. By then, my hand distracted me, for at least a little while, from the labor pains! Anyway, there really is a point here. It was after the birth of my son that my condition worsened, opening the door to conclusively identifying my condition.

Now, I don’t think they knew as much or tested for allergies when I was a child like they do today, so I figure it’s just the result of advances in medicine. Through the testing, we identified my primary allergen. Through the information provided to me by the doctor, my research and reading countless labels, I was able to identify the various names for the chemical and the products that contained it. Not surprisingly, I used many daily!

Now we get to the point. The kinds of products I found it in were my shampoo, conditioner, hand lotions and creams, baby wipes, baby bath, makeup, various facial skin treatments, etc. I was heart broken to have to give up things like my favorite lotions, perfume and nail polish. Some of these products are difficult to find replacements for, but I do what I have to. Additionally, my allergen is found in things like resins and fabric sizing. I had break outs on my feet if I wore leather shoes with no socks because of the resin used in the glue for the leather. Fabric sizing is the stuff they use on clothes as a finisher. It helps give the clothes that nice, crisp look and helps them keep their shape nicely. I often found that clothes shopping for my 3 kids would leave my hands in quite a state after spending all day touching all those new clothes. I was very tempted to go out with vinyl gloves on, but wondered what people would think!

Although unheard of back then, possibly “going organic” for this baby would had given me much comfort and potentially delayed or avoided the onset of my condition by limiting my exposure to the allergen(s) from the beginning. It’s been a few years since pinpointing my allergen and there are still many products, organic lines included, that I need to try. It’s a long process to find products without the allergen that do the job I need. We do also know that I have at least one other allergen, but we have yet to identify it. I call it my “mystery allergen”. Flare ups can happen immediately (but most often do not) or as much as a couple of weeks after exposure, so it can be difficult to figure out sometimes.

If you are interested in organic clothing and learning about the benefits, I suggest you begin with reading about the different lines that are available. This year, The Rosey Bear Boutique is introducing 3 different lines of organic baby clothing. If you’ve shopped organic before, you know that it can be difficult to find dressier styles. This is really just the nature of designing clothing out of organic cotton. However, we’ve found some beautiful pieces like dresses and well coordinated sets in beautiful colors.

Sage Creek Organics offers some of the greatest colors and prints found in organics today. They pretty much do away with the idea that if it’s organic, the only color is natural. Of course, they do offer beautiful natural shades, but you have more choices! Their Why organic? page will give you lots of information on the environmental benefits of organics. A very popular clothing line, Sage Creek Organics is trusted by the likes of Halle Berry, Jessica Alba and Tori Spelling and has been featured in Parents Magazine, People Magazine and on CBS News – The Early Show. Read more about Sage Creek In The News on their site.

We are also proud to introduce Honeyroo Organic Clothing. Honeyroo’s collection is made from both bamboo and organic cotton fibers. A couple of features of bamboo is that it’s hypoallergenic, provides UVA protection and is 100% biodegradable. Oh, and, you’ve just got to touch these clothes! These are some of the softest garments we “looked” at in our search. Honeyroo’s Why organic? page will give you more information about their fabrics too. Also noteworthy is that Honeyroo is a mom invented line, sparked by a baby with very sensitive skin. You can read more about their beginning on their About Us page.

Another mom invented line, Bossy Baby joined The Rosey Bear Boutique’s offerings this summer. With beautiful trims and detail, their Organic Cotton Earth Jumper Set and Organic Cotton Ribbon Dress are wonderful additions that we think our customers are going to love!

We’ve given you a few places to start, but there is far more information out there and several more clothing lines to choose from. We’ve highlighted those that we’ve researched and decided were the kind of clothing we wanted to offer our customers. We believe in these products and are proud to recommend them to our customers. So, do your research and visit our organic baby clothing section to see what we carry.

With back-to-school time approaching, I was reminded of a little trick I use for the kids’ shoes. If you’re like me, I don’t want to buy more than one pair of shoes for a school year! I have to buy particularly expensive shoes for my daughter with possibly the narrowest foot on the planet, and once a year is plenty! Now, this same daughter grew 3½ inches last year, so I also have to plan for growth!

With half sizes not always being that easy to find, we are typically forced to choose the next full size up. Plus, a half-size larger may not last the whole year. Oh, and let’s not forget if your child wears a uniform to school and you want/need navy blue. Later in the year, that color becomes VERY scarce!

So, you try on shoes, finding the next size bigger than what fits now or they’ve just outgrown. However, it’s a little too big. One size down is too small. What do you do? I’ve tried those things that go on the inside behind the ankle. They are nice because they are adhesive and can be cut and shaped to fit. However, they don’t take the abuse of shoes that are worn every day. They can shift, exposing the adhesive, sticking to socks and being generally annoying. (We know what happens when our children are annoyed…) Plus, once the child needs that extra room towards the end of the school year, that adhesive is difficult to remove. Especially if they are leather shoes. No amount of Goo-Gone will release that stuff from the suede side of leather.

Well, there is a much more flexible solution! Stuff the toes of the shoes with cotton balls. Plain old, ordinary cotton balls. Fit them into the toe along the shape of the shoe so they don’t feel “weird” when the child wears them. Add a few, try them on, add a few more until you’ve achieved the right fit. One advantage of cotton balls is that you can put different amounts into each shoe. As we all know, everyone has one foot that is larger than the other.

Perhaps the biggest advantage is that cotton balls are not an all or nothing kind of solution. Let the child wear the shoes for a while and then check the fit. You can adjust the fit as often as necessary. At first, you may need to add a few more cotton balls as the original ones get squished down from wearing. Or, you may need to move them around or take some out, depending on how the child says they feel. Later on, as his/her foot grows, you can start removing the cotton balls a little bit at a time. You end up with a very comfortable solution to give your child perfectly fitting shoes all year long!