I'm tired of waking up smelling like pee.

[Faliciagayle]

DS is 8 months old and a heavy wetter. Whatever I put him in at night inevitably leaks. Before I tackle the diaper/cover issue, what can I put on my bed to avoid having to strip down to the mattress protector case?

Having to wash the mattress pad is a pain - it takes 4 cycles to dry (it's the Target brand which is apparently water proof underneath the cotton, which is great ... except for the washing and drying).

Those smallish puddle pads make me sweat and make the bed too lumpy for my cosleeping comfort.

Felted wool blanket? Can I wash that?

[Sol_Solved]

Our dust mite cover is waterproof but doesn't make us sweat, and it doesn't crinkle. Plus, it has elastic like a bedsheet so we don't need to remove the mattress to get it out, and it dries easily on the delicate setting of our dryer. We got it from Amazon, it's the Sleep tite brand, and it's been just great to cosleep with our almost potty trained DS. None of the urine has passed through to the mattress, but it's still absorbed by the cotton layer of the cover.

[St. Margaret]

And I'd get a babyology or similar wool diaper cover-- DD would leak at night and we put one of those over her bumgenius and problem solved!

[P.J.]

I realize this may be politically incorrect to say here, but I know some folks use cloth during the day and disposables at night for exactly this reason.
You'd only be using one or for a heavy wetter maybe two per night, which IMO is not causing loads and loads of harm.

[cristeen]

Sposies are no guarantee against leaks.

Felted wool blanket would be a good option. And i second babyology soaker, they're fairly bulletproof. But it also sounds like you plain need more absorbency.

[aramat]

We had leaks overnight with disposables. During the super-soaker phase, we used two prefolds--big diaper, but worked.

For the bed, I always just got two of our big bath towels and spread them under where baby would be.

[mumkimum]

I've used (& machine washed after using) old felted wool blankets for this purpose.
Sometimes a fleece blanket may work for you too - whichever is more comfortable (sometimes I'd cover either of these with an extra flat sheet, folded, for my comfort).


(I know you're not looking for it yet, but I LOVE polar babies happy pants covers for nighttime)

[mbhf]

I use a too big disposable at night on my newborn. He only just barely stirs to nurse so I don't change him at night and it works great. Before that I used a disposable (that was his size) with a cloth diaper and voer over top. That worked too, but was really bulky and actually elevated his butt quite a bit which didn't look comfortable to me.

Other things I've done in the past-
My old mattress pad sounds like what you have, water proof crinkly plastic on the bottom with softer stuff on top. I put it on upside down (with the plastic on top) and put a thick cotton blanket over it. That way if we had a leak we could just wash the sheets and blanket and I just sprayed the plastic with my all purpose cleaner and wiped it off. Maybe that's gross? I don't know. This was good for occasional leaks.

A waterproof pad that was not a mattress pad over the sheets with a cotton blanket over the top. Didn't feel sweaty because of the blanket over top and I only had to wash the blanket and pad when we had a leak. You can buy a pad for this purpose (with the mattress covers at Target) or you can get a big fleece blanket and fold it over a couple of times, I have a king size blanket folded in fourths.