June 1, 2005

What's Up With All The Snaps? McSweeney's and My Mom Want To Know

I got a call a few weeks ago from my mother. She didn't say "hello," she said, "I've got it figured out. There are too many snaps." Umm... She'd just finished changing the kid's cousin's diaper, and she was fed up with the barrage of snaps she had to deal with in the process.

So, apparently, is the McSweeney's writer who penned this "OPEN LETTER TO THE MANUFACTURERS OF INFANT SLEEPWEAR" [thanks, Matt]

[btw, my mom's proposed solution, which we'd already endorsed: trap-door style pj's from French manufacturers like Petit Bateau and DPAM, which have 2-3 snaps, max.]

17 Comments

Julie's husband, Paul, also dislikes the snaps.


It seems to be a theme today.

Oh, god... if I had a dime for everytime I said how much I hate snaps.. well, okay, I wouldn't be able to retire, but maybe buy a Bugaboo...

I've always said that if I start a daddy-blog, I'd call it "I Hate Snaps"

I hate snaps, which is one reason to use gowns at night, but they're a pain to put over the baby's head. Why don't they make gowns with snaps up the front - or even a few snaps to make it easier to put on?

Hanna Andersson. Zippers on all their sleepers. Expensive, but so worth it! Also, Carter's at Target (whatever that line is) has zippers, but they are fleece, not cotton.

For the one-piece tee-shirt thingies with the trademarked name, I used a dab of red nail polish on the center snap. It helped.

re nail polish: huh?

What bugs me the most is how every brand of sleeper has its own snap pattern. Zutano wins snaps [er, props?] for only having five.

Meanwhile, the bigger sizes of BuyBuyBaby's BB Basics, which we used to love, actually have this extra crotch flap, as if the designers are thinking of ways to use up all these snaps they had left over. Hate them.

Greg - re: nail polish - I think she means so she can line up the snaps correctly....?

my personal beef with snaps is just how difficult it is for my not-so-coordinated-now-that-I-am-an-adult fingers to snap those little things together.

Snaps! Ugh. They're bad enough when the kid's small but when they get older and start wriggling the whole deal becomes impossible.

Oh, Snap!
I try to make changing time more fun by humming stripper songs, "Bah na nuh Na! Na!" Although I don't do it slowly like the girl strippers since I have a boy. I yank fast and throw the pants to the side.

I hate snaps! I'm always mis-aligning them. How bout velcro?

Velcro is too easy. We bought my daughter velcro shoes when she was 9 mos, and within a week, she learned how to get them off. Now she has shoe laces that we double-knot.

Of course, she still sometimes gets them untied and off.

Yes - the dab of nail polish was to help with the alignment of the center snap, because I was always having to re-do them if I screwed up - or I'd find that my husband would leave them snapped up incorrectly and it made me crazy.

when my sweetie was at 6mo or so i also got fed up with the snap thing so for lounge wear during the day i went to t-shirts by gerber 3 for $10ish at night and show&tell i just put up with it

to me the t-shirts just made the many diaper changes less of a deal when it was me and her during the day what she wore to spit up on was the last thing on my mind

Heh...my mom, the tireless seamstress, has been making sleepers with zippers for friends and family for many years. Custom made to order at 1/10 the cost of those Hanna Anderssons. Methinks we will be very fortunate to have those once Baby #1 arrives. Wonder why you can't find many zipper sleepers--were there liability issues?

I will dig through the whole freakin' hamper to find the onesies my MIL brought back from Korea. The Korean onesies we have use zippers.

Zippers are the answer.

Anything else is second best.

Gymboree (clothing not play gym) and The Children's Place also sell cotton zippered sleepers.

Oddly enough, I recieved one of those funny emails that people send out to everyone they know just this morning. It starts out like this:

Dear Sirs and/or Madams,

You sadistic bastards.

Do you dislike kids? What else could explain designing sleepwear that prolongs what newborns hate most: being exposed. I'm referring, of course, to the countless snaps you insist on sewing along every linear inch of your PJs.

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