Baby Clothing
Buy and sell baby clothing in Panama.
In the lowland heat a Panamanian baby lives in short-sleeved and sleeveless bodies, with a zip-up footed sleeper kept for nights in an air-conditioned room. Both are outgrown long before they wear out, so most of what turns up here, new or pre-owned, has been washed a handful of times and folded away. Next to the everyday pieces come the ones that carry real value: a baptism outfit worn for one morning, a party dress, a padded coat a relative sent from abroad. American labels sized in months hang beside European ones sized in centimetres, so check which you are reading before you agree to anything.
Short-sleeved bodies for the day, footed sleepers for the air conditioning:
the body, a vest that snaps shut between the legs, is the base of every drawer, and overalls, shorts sets and dresses join it once the baby sits up. Here sleeveless and short-sleeved bodies get far more wear than long sleeves. The footed sleeper is a one-piece suit that covers the legs and feet, closed by a zip or a row of snaps: a zip is quicker in the middle of the night, snaps let you change a diaper without undressing the whole baby. Hats, socks and soft-soled first shoes finish the drawer. Swaddle blankets and crib sheets go with the nursery, and a spare outfit always has a place in the diaper bag for the day a body does not survive lunch. Some clothes a family barely touches. Fleece sleepers and padded snowsuits sent by relatives in the United States sit unworn in a city apartment, and they are exactly what someone heading up to Boquete or flying north in winter is looking for. A baptism outfit, the white suit or gown with its bonnet and shoes, is worn for one morning and then kept in tissue paper.
Carter’s months and European centimetres on the same rail:
American brands such as Carter’s label by age, and Carter’s marks as 3M the size other brands call 0–3M, so the age on a label can be the end of the range on one brand and the whole range on another. European brands such as Name It print a number in centimetres instead, and that number is the baby’s height: measure the child lying down and buy by length, not by age. Cotton shrinks, and a body that has been through the wash many times can fit like the size below.
Why a used body is cheap and a baptism outfit is not:
a Carter’s five-pack of short-sleeved bodies runs about $22 to $25 new, roughly five dollars a body, and a zip-up sleeper sits near $13. Against that, plain used bodies sell by the bundle rather than one at a time, and only clean, unfaded ones move at all. The pieces that hold a price are the ones that cost more new and saw almost no wear: the baptism outfit, the party dress with its tags still on, the coat that never met a cold day.
Yellowed necklines and tired snaps on pre-owned bodies:
hold every piece up to daylight. Milk or formula that never fully washed out can turn into yellow-brown patches months after the clothes went into a box, mostly at the neckline and down the front, and they rarely come out completely. Pull each snap on a body: it should click shut and hold, with no rust on the metal and no torn fabric around it. Check that leg and neck elastic springs back, that a sleeper’s zip runs all the way, and that dress buttons are stitched tight, because a loose one ends up in a baby’s mouth. A musty closet smell washes out; black specks of mould do not. Fakes are rare among everyday basics, but a designer logo on a cheap baby set deserves a close look at the care label and the stitching.
Sorting a drawer of baby clothes for sale:
group the clothes by size and say which system the labels use, months or centimetres, so nobody crosses town for the wrong size. Photograph the whole lot laid flat, then close-ups of the necklines and any mark, in daylight. Name the brands, say whether everything was washed with a fragrance-free detergent, and mention pets or smoking in the house, because plenty of parents ask. A baptism outfit sells on being complete: put the bonnet, shoes and any gloves in the same photo, and say whether it was worn once or never. A family picking it up in Chitré for a ceremony the following weekend wants to hear that it is pressed and ready to wear, not that it still needs a trip to the dry cleaner.