Question About Crib Sheets

Hi L., my aunt gave me this advice when I was prego. First, of all, always use a waterproof matress pad or cover so that you NEVER have to wash the mattress. Second, of all, layer the bedding. Put on several sheets (use sheet protectors too) at a time. This way, when disaster strikes at 3:05, you simply peel off the dirty layers, lay another protector down and you can worry about doing a good cleaning in the morning and you and baby can back to sleep sooner.

I do Christine F's method. Works great! Best tip someone gave me. This morning my girl had diarreah and I just whipped off one sheet, mattress pad and the bed was all made up.

Yes I must say I have changed crib sheets many times. I became quite able of changing sheets and feeding the baby in the dark and low light.

I kept bottles ready to mix at the bedside. I kept my child's linens in their room in a drawer. I suggest putting a leak proof mattress pad under the sheet where baby lies. In that way when you change the sheet, then you don't have to run and wash down the bed beneath baby as well. Just take off the top sheet and wet mattress pad, put on clean items, put baby back in bed.

I used to take care of baby, feed him, and put him to sleep on my bed. Then I would go in and change the linens and transfer my sleeping baby into a clean bed. It was a little easier.

When baby did not sleep through the night yet, I put my infant in a little sleeper basinette that's made to sit on the adult bed. I would put it between the pillows of my husband and myself. I put the bottles with water in them and formula ready to mix on a table beside me. When baby woke up, I could quickly mix the bottle and/or nurse baby. It made the transition between waking, feeding, and going back to sleep much quicker. I also kept a couple diapers, wipes and waste can in the room. After baby was able to sleep through the night (utter bliss), then baby can be moved to their own room.

Also, by keeping baby in the room in the basinette, it's easier to get hubby to take turns getting up with baby!

layer them with a "pee pad" thingie in between them. Then just pull off the top pad and sheet(if it's wet) and therea another one already one. I did this w/3 layers.

The layer thing is the best! It will save ya!
Altho I laughed when I read this, if only that was the only thing that kept them awake...LOL You will learn to function in the middle of the night much easier than you think, your little one will give you no choice!

Good luck!:)

Congrats on your soon-to-arrive baby!

Although I've never done it, I've heard other moms talk about layering the crib with several mattress pads and sheets so that they can just pull off the top layer if there's an overnight accident. For example: mattress pad, sheet, mattress pad, sheet......

The way I survive that nightmare lol is by using mattress pads under the sheet and I use two sheets!!! put a mattress pad down to protect the mattress and cover with a sheet followed by another pad and another sheet that way if your baby wets the bed the mattress and sheet underneath is still dry and you only have to pull off the top sheet instead of changing the whole thing when you're half asleep!!

for the time that my daughter spent in her crib, not long since she's in our bed now <smile>, i would layer sheets. but in between each sheet i would put a layer of cloth diapers or other absorbent cloths. so if there was a need to change sheets in the middle of the night, all you have to do is take the top on off and the cloth diapers right underneath that one. there was always a clean sheet underneath waiting :) hope this helps!

When that would happen, I would put a waterproof pad over the area until a more realistic time. Hope this helps.

Hi L.-
Congratulations on your new arrival soon--I'm waiting for #3 any day now! Here's what worked for the first two:

They make something called waterproof pads that are about 2ft x 3 ft in size. They're kind of fuzzy on one side, and vinyl (or something else leak-proof) on the other, and they're supposed to be very absorbant. I think we got 4 or 6 in a pack, and they're washable. In fact, I have one under the sheets in my bed right now, just in case my water breaks in the middle of the night! :-) Anyway, we stuck one of these under the sheet in the "target area", then put the sheet over it. You can then layer another pad and sheet on top. This way, you only have to take off the wet stuff.

They also sell something called mattress protectors. These are quilted terry-cloth (like a towel), and vinyl on the back. They're about 18 inches x the width of the crib. It's better than just laying down a towel, because they tie on to the sides of the crib so you can get a really snug fit and they won't bunch up around the baby. (I'd hesitate to put a regular towel in with a tiny baby, as loose things in the crib are a SIDS risk). These worked well with my daughter, who liked to spit up sometimes when she was tiny. We had two, and just changed them out when we needed them.

Most of the time you'll be fine...it seemed like sheet-changing went in phases, and drove us nuts for a little while, then the issue would pass. You'd be amazed what you actually CAN do in the middle of the night when you need to...God gives parents that little extra boost to get you through it :-)

Best wishes!

I would usually cover the wet spot with a thick towel until morning, then change the sheet. Much easier :)

ok this will be called remember... lol
when your in the hospital pay attention to how they change your bed sheets once your water has broken and other things... first they have wet pds under you... major plus!!! you can purchase washable ones they are great.. i still use them to thisday with wetting the bed toddlers and such... but you undo one side of th bed and tuck it under them while putting the new sheet on that side... then u tuck good sheet and wet sheet under the baby therefore undoing the other side and attaching the new sheet to that side as well... very easy and quick process... not too bad. and i still have o with toddlers in there own bed... most of the time they sleep through it. good luck

I have mat covers most of the center from edge to edge that I put on top of the sheet then I put a crib size blanket over it, like a baby quilt, something heavy enough that she cant move it, then if she wets, I cant just take those two out and she can sleep on the sheet until morning. They also have whats called sheet savers, same idea, goes on over the sheet, if she wets just take that piece off. You could also layer them. Sheet, mat, sheet, then if she wets, just remove the top sheet and mat and your good to go.

L.,
I have a sheet that fits on top of the regular mattress sheet that has snaps and it just snaps around the crib rails. So, you can just remove it if it gets wet. It is like a flat sheet with waterproofing on the bottom side. I don't remember what it is called, but I believe I got it from babies r us. Great for that situation!

SHEET SAVERS!!!! They work awesome! You can put one on (under head for spitups, or under butt for leaks) or you can use two, one for each. They are comfortable, safe and really easy to change. You can get them at Babies R US. I use them on top of the sheets still, and my son is 6.5 months old. Saves alot of time and energy because those crib sheets are a pain to change.
Good Luck!

I can probably count on one hand the times I've had to change sheets in the middle of the night. Of course, I haven't starting potty training my daughter yet ;) When they are infants, you're up with them every couple of hours so change the diaper then. If we had a leakage problem at night, we went up to the next size diaper at night time. The bigger size holds more. And I agree with Jill, you'll be amazed at the things you can do when you're half asleep. I can almost guarantee that you will have at least one morning when you wake up and go "OH CRAP! Did I feed the baby in the middle of the night? Did I do the diaper change? Where am I? What time is it?" and other questions you never thought you'd ask yourself. One time when my dd was an infant, I cleaned the whole house, did the dishes and made dinner and remembered doing none of it. My husband said I looked like a zombie!!!! Just make sure to always keep an extra mattress pad and crib sheet handy, just in case you need to do a middle of the night swap.

Changing the sheet is easier than changing the child. Make sure you always have a clean pair of pajamas/onesie for your baby before you go to sleep, or you may have a wet baby with nothing to wear. If your baby has a favorite blanket or toy they sleep with, be prepared to substitute that in case it gets wet too. Hopefully you won't have wet beds very often. If you can change everything in minimal light that helps. Good luck and congratulations!

I layer my daughters crib sheets-- my friend calls it the crib sheet recipe:

Mattress
full waterproof mattress pad
sheet
waterproof pad
sheet
waterproof pad
sheet
etc.

I can get three sheets or layers on her mattress and it has been great! She is 20-months-old now and we, thankfully, don't have the as many blow-outs, etc., but it makes 'changing' her sheets for laundry much easier. congrats on your baby to be!

You need an Ultimate Crib Sheet.

I always changed my kids crib sheets even at 2 in the morning if it was wet, or if my kids were sick, and threw up in their crib. It is not fun having to change sheets at that time of the morning, but do you want your baby to sleep on a wet sheet all night? I know some people who would put their baby down at the other end of the crib, but I just couldn't do it. I had to change the sheets.
D.

I am 31 and have been married for almost 12 yrs. My husband and I have 3 boys ages 10,7, and 4.

Target and babies-R-us have pads that you can put down ontop of the cribsheet keep several on hand and that way if your child wets all you have to do is remove/change the pad and the child. I've used them and it works well.

I would highly recommend the "Ultimate Crib Sheet". It is a sheet on one side with waterproof material on the other. It snaps onto the sides of the crib and sits on top of your regular crib sheet. I have a few of them and I keep one on all the time and rotate it every few days. You don't even have to bother changing the regular crib sheet too often because it never gets dirty. I used it with my first who is now 6 years old and it made things sooo much easier when she got sick or her diaper leaked. You don't even have to worry about changing the regular crib sheet too often because it never gets dirty. My second is 6 months old and he spits up and slobbers alot so his sheets get pretty wet. It really is a life saver. It is my "can't live without" item. You can get them at Babies-R-Us and probably online. Good luck!

I can't remember the last time either of my kids wet the bed...if you are changing diapers often enough, they shouldn't be wetting through.

Hi L..
Congratulations on your baby on the way! How exciting.
You are really thinking ahead with this question! I never thought about things like that. :) But anyway, what I did was to put an extra receiving blanket or changing pad under tha baby(for awhile I used a disposable changing pad under a receiving blanket & that worked well)for leaks. When we transitioned to cloth diapers, which we use now, they have a snap in liner that we use at night for extra absorbancy.

You will be shocked what you can do when you are half asleep...just wait :-)

I agree that by the time you change baby, you will be up enough.

Good question! You can very easily layer a crib pad and crib sheet, then another crib pad and crib sheet. That way, if the top set gets wet, just strip that off, and you are ready with clean & dry sheet underneath. Also, at night I put my boys (now 11 & 9 yrs) in diapers that were one size bigger than what they wore for daytime, that way they leaked much less during the night.
Good luck!

my daughter had a bunch of those big burp cloth things, I even had some that coordinated with her sheets. Tuck one of those into the crib until morning. That's what I did.

We use the double sheet / pad method that Kristle uses too.

Well, these good ladies have beat me to it! Layering is where it's at! And those waterproof pads are great.

When my sons were newborns I had the best leak-proof-ed-ness (<-like my new word??) with the Huggies diapers...but when they got to be 3 to 4 months the only ones that seemed to work were Luvs. Just thought it was funny how one was better for different stages of baby-dom. <-ok, my word-power needs some help this morning! lol! Good luck and enjoy that precious newborn. :)

Clouds and Stars makes a wonderful product called Quick Zip sheets. I found them on the One Step Ahead baby product web site. It basically works like a normal fitted sheet - you put on the mattress upside down so the bottom of the mattress is covered and the edges come all around the top and the edges have a zipper. Then you have a flat sheet type second piece that zips into place, the sell them in the normal linen or cotton sheet and in a flannel that helped my boys a lot in the winter time. The zipper is sort of hidden my a little flap that lays flat. My son didn't find that figure out how to unzip it until almost two and he was moving into a toddler bed anyway. The only problem is they are pretty limited on color/pattern selection. But they were wonderful! No moving bumper pads or anything. One of my favorite baby products. Both my boys are out of a crib now so I actually put all mine away for the garage sale next spring. I have two bottom sheets, two regular tops and two flannel tops, all mine are plain white. Let me know if once you check them out you are interested.
I also used the waterproof pads, but not the quilted ones the flat ones, I would buy the full crib size and cut it in three, then put that one down under the babies head/face for little spit ups. Then just change the pad for small problems or the whole "top" sheet for the bigger problems.
Good Luck with the new baby!

L.,

My son was notorious for getting the crib wet overnight and I have two suggestions for you.

1. If it really gets to be an issue, like you're changing the sheets every night, then I'd invest in something called Diaper Doublers. And I laugh when I use the word 'invest' because they are like $3 tops for a pack of 30 of them. I use them for my little Sam and we've not had a single wet sheet since. They're kind of like a maxi pad for the inside of the diaper. I know it sounds weird and a little creepy, but they work like a charm! But you probably wont need to get into these until your little one is a bit older.

2. Buy some large waterproof changing pads. The kind made out of fabric. Also very cheap. B.D.D. (Before Diaper Doublers) we used them to cover the wet spot until the morning when I could change the crib. Now this wont work so well if your little one moves around a lot. And I think what I did was I would put the pad down then cover half the crib mattress with a towel, tucking the towel firmly into the sides so it wouldn't come out. Quick, quiet, and good enough to keep Sam sleeping until I can get to it in the morning. The smaller fabric pads I also used - and still use - on the changing table over the changing table pad for quick clean up when we have an accidental toxic diaper blowout.

Hope this helps, and congratulations on the baby to come!!
J.

Hi L., There are some really good suggestions here if this becomes a problem ... but it might not be a problem for you at all. My two year old and my baby have never had trouble with diaper leaks at night. I don't think it happened more than two or three times. I recommend Pampers Swaddlers diapers. They are great! Good luck!

Hi L.. One idea that makes it much easier to change out a wet sheet is if you have an extra set of sheets on the mattress with a waterproof pad in between the layers of sheets so if they do get the top sheet a little wet then you can shed that one off quickly and get your little one back into a dry crib right away and get back to sleep yourself. Best of luck!

We use a lap pad that we lay on top of the sheet, below the child. So, if it gets wet, you just change it instead of the entire sheet. We use small ones under her head. But they have a larger size that you could put under their whole body. If you went to babiesrus.com and did a search for lap pads, they would come up. Ours are made by Carters.

Just change the sheet with a clean one.

I used pampers swaddlers/cruisers, and although crib sheets got wet occassionally it wasn't very often. By the time the cribe sheet is wet, so is the entire baby. By the time I changed the baby diaper and clothes and got baby fed I was either awake enough to change the crib, or put the baby in the bassinet or pack n play for the rest of the night. Best of luck!

My now 5yo spit up constantly as a baby. What I did was put a Cloth Diaper (the thick ones) under her head. I would just pull that off when I picked her up and got a clean one for her feeding and placed it under her head when I put her back to bed. The same thing would work with a leakage diaper. However, if you are concerned about wetting the diaper through the night (Some babies don't wake up every two hours to eat...if you are lucky s/he will sleep through the entire night:) I would just place a thick bath towel under him/her at the start of the night. You could just pull that off and put a new one down if it gets wet. Pluss, you will be surprised what you can do with and for your baby without even opening your eyes once s/he is here :) Congrats and Enjoy

Hi L., You will love being a mother - the ups and the downs!!!! There are a lot of great suggestions here, but speaking as a mother with a son who was born with one kidney, I know what changing sheets in the middle of the night can be like. Layering is a wonderful idea and usually works, but also by the time you change and feed the baby you usually just wind up changing the bed anyway!! Best of luck.

I use the receiving blankets that they gave us from the hospital and put it right on top of the sheets (and I would leave it there all the time). It's easy to pull off and switch after the mess and absorbent for pee, poo, and spit up all of which you will experience for the first few months! I've never worried about securing them, it's not like the baby moves around! Have fun, it's not as bad as it sounds.

Check out The Ultimate Crib Sheet at Babies R Us. It snaps around the crib rails and makes for very easy changes! You're going to love mommyhood! Enjoy! :)

They make these great waterproof crib pads. They come in all sizes. We used the larger size, approx 2 foot by 2 foot. These do not seem to shift in the bed. Lay one on top of the crib sheet and lay your baby on top of the pad. If your baby has soaked through during the night, simply change your baby's clothes and diaper and pick the crib pad up, to be machine washed in the morning, put a fresh clean crib pad in it's place. The sheet will still be dry. If I remember correctly, we had 4 or 5 of the crib pads. They are fairly inexpensive and save on changing the crib sheets, as often.

Congratulations! I never tried this but I've heard that you could put a waterproof pad down on the mattress then a sheet, then another waterproof pad and another sheet. That might be worth a try. Luckily I only remember changing 1 or 2 sheets at night in the crib and probably 2 or 3 when our oldest was in his toddler bed - which is MUCH easier IMO! To me, it doesn't matter what time of day you are changing sheets in the crib - I could be wide awake with full sun at 2:00 in the afternoon - and still have trouble with it, LOL!
Good Luck!

Honestly, this was never as big of a problem as it seemed it would be before my kids were born. I can count on one hand the number of times I've had to do it. The only times I remember changing a crib sheet because it was wet was when our son had the stomach flu and there was vomit on it. Or, if it got a little wet from some spit up or a little diaper leak, I would just move the baby to the other end of the crib and deal with it in the morning!

There is a product called the "ultimate crib sheet" that snaps into the corners instead of covering the whole mattress, so you don't have to remove the mattress to change the sheet.

Otherwise, I'm sure moms have already posted to layer a couple of sheets and mattress pads so that you only have to strip the dirty one. The clean one will be underneath.

Good luck and congrats on your baby to be!

You've already got a lot of responses. I haven't read them all. It shouldn't B. very often that you have to change the sheets. Well, they do spit up frequently though. Those absorbant flannel burp-y pads that you'll get work great as an extra layer when they go to sleep. He/she spits up, then you just take that pad away.
Best wishs.

HI L. -

I used sheet savers. They are a pad that has ties. Place the pad over the wet spot or put the pad down before betime and remove when bed is wet. YOu just tie the strings to the crip rails. THey worked great and easy to wash and remove. Got them at babies R Us.

Congrats on your new baby! I'm sure you will encounter all sorts of fun findings as you go along. They make little mattress pads that you can put on top of the sheet. (Kind of like the diaper changing pads.) Those seemed to help me make it through a couple of wet nights. Changing the crib sheet is much easier than a regular bed sheet anyway. Good luck!

I learned this trick from a friend: keep multiple sheets & matress covers on the mattress.

1st layer - matress cover & sheet
2nd layer - matress cover & sheet
3rd layer - matress cover & sheet

So if you baby has gets sick or gets the sheet wet, you just pull off that sheeet & matress pad & put the baby back to bed w/very little interruptions! It has worked wonderfully for me! I hope this helps!