I did laundry - again - yesterday and noticed that there were tons of bibs in the laundry. Now, if you have a baby, and only do laundry once a week, you may not understand what I mean. But I have a smaller washer/dryer, and so I can (and must if I don't want to spend all weekend doing nothing but laundry) do washing every night. There were a bunch of bibs in there. I mean, about 12 for two days worth of baby laundry. I thought to myself - what am I doing with all these bibs?

And then I remembered - my son drools.

Some people are lucky, and their baby spends very little time drooling. Some babies drool only right when their teeth are coming through. Some drool all the time for no reason at all. And some, like mine, do a combination of the two.

Drooling is common in teething babies. The gums produce excess saliva that moistens and softens them. This is supposed to make the teething process easier for the baby. In some babies, this excess drool goes down their throats and causes coughing or, sometimes, excessive spitting up. The drooling is not something to worry about.

Sometimes the drool is caused because the baby sucks/chews on his fist/fingers/thumb or whatever he can get in his mouth. Then, it seems, the drool accumulates and simply drops out of his mouth at the worst moment possible (this happened to my suit this morning for work).

My baby simply lets it all come out of his mouth at any time. His chewing and sucking doesn't seem to keep the drool in his mouth - it all still comes out.

This drooling has caused many problems for me early on. I would put him in the cutest, most perfect outfit for the day, and about 20 minutes later it would be so wet it had to be changed. It was a real downer when that happened. I then had to find another perfect outfit for the day.

Now my probems have been solved. I put bibs on him. All his pictures have him in bibs. I love bibs. They are great.

Sure, you have to find cute ones. One of my favorite ones is a bib that says "I do my own stunts." I also have some of the Carter's "drool-proof" bibs that I love. They aren't drool-proof. Eventually the drool sinks through, but they last quite a bit longer than simple cloth bibs. So do the yucky feeling plastic ones. They last a while too. Just make sure they have an absorbant material on top and plastic on the bottom.

The bibs make the outfits last longer. It makes him go through 4 changes of clothes a day instead of 10 or so. I don't have to carry 3 extra onsies when we go out because I am afraid he's getting too wet. Now I just have to carry extra bibs (only when we are going out for a while, otherwise one bib suffices).

But it does mean that I have a lot of bibs in the wash all the time. I just have to remember that the bibs are saving me from doing laundry with more of his clothes.

I am assured that the drooling will stop eventually. My mom says that once he cuts a few teeth and learns to swallow better, the drooling will stop.

That's good because as cute as the bibs can be, they still ruin my perfect outfits.