Packing for Geneva: Clothes for Mom & baby

Packing for a 2-week trip with a 3-month old baby was quite an undertaking.  For this post, I will focus only on clothes for Sara and me.

Before I could begin to figure out what to pack for baby Sara, I had to first transition her wardrobe from newborn to 3-month old. 

1. First, I went through her drawer and took out everything.  
2. Next, I put back in what still fit her.  I chose a few items to keep (the outfit she came home from the hospital in, etc).  I bagged and labeled the other clothes, which I will pass on to a friend having a girl in March.  I also only put in 10 pairs of regular socks, plus 3 pairs of fancy socks.  I took out the lightweight spring hats.
3. Third, I went through all the size 3-6 month clothes to decide what I liked and was seasonally-appropriate.  (Some clothes we received from friends who had babies born in different seasons - some worked, some not.)  
4. Fourth, I put everything in her drawer that I envisioned her wearing for the next 2 months or so.  I used the drawer as my physical limit of how many clothes she would have.  It worked out very well with the clothes I picked out.

 

5. Finally, I picked out 10 outfits for her to wear in Geneva (with a plan to do laundry over the weekend).

 I packed a short-sleeved white onesie for each long-sleeved shirt, so that her shirt wouldn't ride up and show her belly/make her cold.  I packed a 10 pairs of socks and 10 sleepers.  At the last minute, I packed two zip-up jackets that she ended up wearing a lot, because it was chilly in the cafeteria.

And of course, her winter coat and hat:

Since I'm writing this after our trip, I can also comment on how my packing worked out.  First, I ended up not doing laundry, because it was just too much trouble.  Sara pretty much never spits up, so her dirty clothes only had drool and maybe a few drops of milk on them.  I felt a little bit bad having her wear dirty clothes, but it was just too hard to do laundry.  In the future, I would rather pack at least enough shirts to have a clean one for each day.


Clothes for Mom:

I didn't have time to fully transition my wardrobe from maternity to current/nursing-friendly clothes.  Instead, I just picked out outfits that would work for Geneva, with a focus on layers and nursing-friendly shirts.  I chose navy and cream/white as my neutrals and teal and burnt orange as my colors, to keep it simple and help with mixing and matching. 

These are the outfits I planned:

This is what I ended up wearing:

I planned a mostly casual wardrobe for hanging out on campus while my husband was in class, with a few nicer outfits for touring the city on the weekends.  I also wore my white/gray nursing infinity scarf, even though it didn't really fit into my theme.  I found that the nursing infinity scarf and the traditional nursing cover I made worked equally well.  Since coming home, I have ordered a navy nursing infinity scarf, which will work better with my wardrobe.

I tried to be somewhat minimalistic (for me) with shoes and accessories.  Although I brought a few different scarves, I brought only one pair of earrings and two pairs of shoes.  Sara has started grabbing and pulling, so I can't wear dangly earrings or necklaces unless I am out without her, so I just didn't bring any.  This was a huge change for me, since I love dangly earrings and necklaces and normally bring several with me while traveling.  I also brought only snowboots (which I wore on the airplane) and slip-on walking shoes (which I used both as indoor slippers and around campus).  It was such a blessing that the cafeteria was in the same building as our room, so I could just wear the walking shoes Mon-Fri.  It was so nice taking Sara in the stroller to meals without having to put on our winter coats.

I discovered quickly that my teal and brown batwing shirts were by far the best for nursing in public, because they have a v-neck that can be pulled down, instead of having to pull my shirt up and worry about my stomach showing/getting cold.  I rearranged from my original plans to wear those two shirts every Saturday and Sunday, when we were traveling.

Overall, I feel like I really did well at packing for both of us for this trip.

I didn't really take and "outfit" pictures, but here are a few where you can see our outfits: