Preparing the Layette: What a Household Assembled Before a Birth

What did a household actually need to prepare before a baby was born, according to early government guidance?

Before a hospital birth was the default, preparing for a baby meant preparing the house, not just the wardrobe. The U.S. Children's Bureau's Prenatal Care, written by Mrs. Max West and issued in 1913, told expectant mothers plainly that overdoing the layette was a common mistake: "the mother wastes a good deal of vital energy in the preparation of an elaborate layette, only to find that many of the garments are outgrown before they are worn." The bulletin recommended a few simple garments to start, adding more once the baby was older, and noted that "large dealers" already sold complete ready-made layettes, an option the bureau considered a real economy rather than a shortcut to feel guilty about.

The bureau reduced the wardrobe itself to four working principles: garments had to be warm without being heavy, loose enough for the baby's muscles to move freely, simple, and easy to keep clean. From those principles came an exact list. Prenatal Care's "Baby's Clothes" called for three unhemmed flannel abdominal bands, six to eight inches wide and twenty inches long; three part-wool-and-cotton shirts; four flannel "Gertrude" skirts; three outing-flannel nightgowns; eight white slips; three knitted bands with shoulder straps; at least four dozen diapers; a cloak, cap, and knitted carriage blanket; and stockings or socks depending on the season. A companion nursery kit covered the baby's toilet rather than his wardrobe: soft towels and washcloths, four dozen safety pins in assorted sizes, a hot-water bag, talcum powder, castile soap, olive oil, and two ounces of boric acid. For a bed, the bulletin was unsentimental: "if desired, a clothes basket makes a good bed," with a folded piece of table felting standing in for a mattress.

Getting ready went beyond the baby's own things, because most births still happened at home. Prenatal Care instructed households to clear the brightest room of drapery and upholstered furniture, raise a low double bed on wooden blocks if nothing better was available, and have a portable electric lamp on hand in case the doctor needed strong light for stitches. The layette and the delivery room were prepared together, by the same household, in the weeks before the same event.

By the time the Bureau's Infant Care bulletin was revised in 1929 under Dr. Martha M. Eliot, the clothing list had barely changed in substance, still built around dozens of diapers, a handful of knitted bands, and plain white slips, but the reasoning behind it had sharpened, and the accompanying equipment list had grown considerably more specific. Beyond a bed and bureau, the 1929 bulletin's "essential" furnishings included a wall thermometer, a low nursing chair, and a full bathing kit kept in a divided tray: absorbent cotton, a boric-acid solution, three sizes of safety pins, castile soap, squares of gauze, talcum powder, mineral oil or petroleum jelly, six soft linen towels, and six wash cloths. A separate list of merely "useful" articles included a clothes rack, balance scales, a screen for privacy during bathing, a hinged gate for the stairway, and, in the years before most households had electric refrigeration, a small nursery icebox of its own.

The revised bulletin explicitly warned against binding a baby too snugly: "a band drawn tightly about the abdomen may do harm," a direct correction of the older assumption that infants needed firm support around the middle. It was equally direct about ornament, instructing that "no garment should have trimming that can scratch or irritate the tender skin of the baby's neck, nor should any garment be starched." Making the bed itself was its own small procedure: oilcloth or rubber sheeting tied over the mattress with tapes at each corner, then a cotton pad, then a small sheet tucked under on all four sides. The bulletin recommended skipping a pillow entirely, reasoning that "the baby will lie more nearly flat without one," and suggested a folded napkin under the head instead if anything was wanted at all, guidance that lines up with what pediatricians now advise for exactly the opposite reason, to keep loose bedding away from a sleeping infant. Rubber bloomers, sold at the time as a way to protect clothing from a wet diaper, got a direct caution of their own: the bulletin called them "bad for the baby" because they trapped moisture against the skin, and said they should be kept for special occasions such as travel rather than everyday use. The bulletin also flagged a hazard specific to secondhand furniture: crib and playpen paint should contain no white lead, because a baby who chewed the rail could be poisoned.