We are in the middle of investing in a baby mattress. Do you have any experience which one is the best for hte baby..

A foam mattress?
A innerspring mattress?

Has anyone used the organic (cotton/wool) mattress?

Any info would help us make a decision.
Many thanks
S

My babies always had a water mattress in their crib.

Interesting, I have never heard of this.

I do not think the baby minds at all! They will adapt.

I would put a waterproof and then cotton layer on the mattress... It is going to occasionally get wet.

Generally, it is recommended to have a new mattress for each child, so do not expect a 'resale' value. For that reason, and the fact that they only use it for a couple of years, I would choose foam..

In our household almost all our family sleep on foam mattresses... So that is 'normal' for us...

Thank you for the quick replies!!!
Much appreciated

We have an organic mattress from the US which has springs. I would only get a foam one if it was really hard.

Whichever you choose, just make sure to open it as soon as possible and air out as long as you can before the baby comes to help with out gassing, especially with foam.

Since we are big waterbed fans we wanted to have one for the babies, too. Unfortunately I can't remember where we bought it, somewhere in Germany. I think the water mattress is good for the soft baby skeleton since it gives no pressure on the body and the temperature is always the same, which means it is warm and cosy all the time, no need for hot water bottles.
Plus there will be no dust or liquid or anything in the mattress, since you can clean the surface. Very good for babies with risk of house dust mite allergy when it runs in the family, too.

Yeah, I did a search and found they do exist!

I have also never heard of putting a hot water bottle in a crib - so there you have it, my allotted learning for the day taken care of

We just had some standard crib mattress and used the same one for all 3 babies...

We bought one from Ikea. About 60CHF I think. A baby will be happy on almost anything so I don't see any need to fuss about such a thing. It's likely you'll add a waterproof cover and a cotton sheet on it, so the material of the mattress is rather irrelevant. You could of course spend a lot of money on one but your baby won't appreciate it. Save that money for later, you'll need it.

And just for child-safety. You do *not* put a hot water bottle in bed with a baby. You can, if the house is particularly cold, put one in the bed a few minutes before the baby is due to go to bed, then take it out before tucking baby in.

However, with the central heating here in Switzerland, I have never found the apartment do be cold, and generally you should 'dress the baby' suitably for sleep, rather than adding lots of bedding.

I totally agree with this-my three kids fell asleep on play mats, in strollers, on us, and plenty of other surfaces. Not only will they not care about a fancy mattress, you may also find that they may need movement to fall asleep. In any case, a baby mattress won't get much use, except maybe as a gymnastics mat once those babies are older

Well the water mattress wasn't overly expensive and its worth the money because you can use it again and again, there will be no imprint in the mattress from a body. Plus I do think a good mattress is important....

We too have a water mattress but for ourselves. A water mattress is not firm, even a waveless one and a firm mattress is important for the safety of the infant and reduces SIDS. A water mattress could leak at any time and you'll be laying in a pool of water inside the protective liner. Water beds have a heater so your infant is laying on a bed with a heated element underneath. I guess you could switch it off but generally they are thermostatic. I've seen what can happen when they fail too - not pretty. What happens too when they get to 8 or 9 months and start jumping up and down on it?

I don't think many parents would be happy to have a baby sleep, alone on a water bed to be honest.

I am a very bad mother, thank you for putting me straight. To think I let my kids sleep on a water mattress will certainly get me to hell.

Yes, they leak all the time and that bad, bad electro smog..... but the jumping is simple: my kids never jumped in bed and knew they weren't supposed to. The real problem when they were older and had a big water mattress were their friends coming over, thinking they could jump on the bed, which they seemed to have been allowed at home.

I'm a bad mother too, since I am cosleeping with my five-month old, and did with my four and five year olds as well. Sometimes all together in the same bed.

Still, as an American, I was completely surprised that water mattresses even exist for infants. I'd always associated them with bachelor pads uh, not that I'd know anything about that.

Having had kids here while my American friends are having kids across the pond, I have been surprised at how much of what we're supposed to do in terms of parenting (and especially that hot-button topic SIDS) is cultural.

Oh, and my kids never jumped on the beds either-the cheap IKEA bed slats made me paranoid that they'd smash them in no time

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Where are we going and what's with this handbasket?

No one said you were a bad mother, just that most would not feel comfortable using such a soft sleep surface.

I used to work in a store which sold waterbed mattresses, as well as normal ones. We had no baby ones though. Perhaps they are safer? I've seen the melted liners from failed heaters. I've seen vinyl bladders that have split open and allowed the water to escape, leaving an angry and surprised owner laying in water (or at least a soaking pillow top) I've never had a leaking mattress myself but I have had a thermostat fail and the water in the bed got uncomfortably warm before I found the heater underneath was so hot it was marking the wooden surface it lay on.

You love waterbeds and I love waterbeds but most people actually dislike them. I can't speak for your child.

we have a organic cotton, wool, coconut fibre (i think) mix, which our kids seem to like a lot. they have a softer and a harder side. you can flip as you prefer. the mattress can be used till the kids are about 5, depending on their size, so reasonably long (we only bought the 70x140 size to use from birth).

so many choices