Mattress Pads

[HWGosman]

First of all, let me say that I love, love, love this book. I've told every mother-to-be I know about this book. I can't say enough about it. It definitely helped this very confused firt-time mother register for and purchase safe smart baby gear. I followed the advice and decided to do my baby's room in a Laura Ashley print because of the safety-ratings on the sheets. I also purchased a recommended mattresses. However, what about mattress pads? I don't remember anything in the book about this. Do I need one? Are some safer than others? I've put so much time and thought into buying safe items for my baby, that I'd hate to add something unsafe to her bedding.

Thanks in advance,

Heather Gosman

[mom03]

Hi!

Check out pg. 91 in the 4th edition book on The Ultimate Crib Sheet by Basic Comfort. It is used in place of the traditional mattress pads. I am pretty impressed with this particular product after reading about it (it appears to be more convenient to use) and am planning to get a couple of them instead of mattress pads. I haven't seen the product in person yet but I hope it would work as well as what the person in the book said it is for her. Only thing I'm not sure is if the bumper pads will get in the way of the straps (probably not).

[cara1]

Mattress pads are helpful when your sheets are (inevitably) soaked with 1)urine 2)poop 3)spit-up 4)1 and 2 5)2 and 3 6)all of the above 7)other unidentifiable wet substance. However, that being said, the "waterproof" one (rather than water resistant I guess?) I bought in BRU had so much vinyl that it stunk from plastic and I ended up returning it. We now have two mattress pads that generally need to get washed whenever the sheets are wet, but at least the mattress itself doesn't get icky. Some people do rave about the ultimate crib sheet. I didn't feel like getting it after agonizing over the perfect soft, cottony, nice fabric sheets. However, I did have a small rectangle thingie that goes on top of the sheet to collect spit up. At one point I had one for DS's face and another for his bottom. This prevented many a sheet-change. However, once he became more mobile, they didn't work since he squirmed himself off of the rectangle. Of course, by that time, he wasn't spitting up much.
In summary, yes, you need something else beside the sheet. :)

[corrie]

You may want to do a bit more research before deciding on the ultimate crib sheet. Reviews at babiesrus.com and oter such sites seem to indicate that the quality of these sheets has declined over the years and that they might present a safety hazard (children scooting under the sheet). Threads here have discussed this problem as well.

In general, I have been reading a lot of parent product reviews and using that as my guide when selecting mattress pads and waterproof pads/sheets.

Good luck to you!

-Corrie

[Momof1Golden1Lab]

I agree that you need something like a mattress pad, just to make clean-up easier. But I think that the ultimate crib sheet is overrated. The one I got was so cold and rough on Colin's face - I much preferred to put him down on the soft, warm flannel sheets that I bought him!

I might try a similar concept to the UCS, but with fleece. Another mom here discovered fleece sheets and raved about them, but I think that it would be easy to adapt the UCS idea using a piece of fleece instead. And it would be much cheaper than the fleece sheets!