Kids Foam Mattresses

Why Kids Foam Mattresses are a Great Idea

We have all slept on some uncomfortable mattresses in our time and been fairly grumpy the following morning; and many of these may have been foam mattresses – but the foam mattress can be very useful.

Firstly, let me tell you that I love my kids, and I would never want them to have an uncomfortable nights sleep. But I have also bought them both foam mattresses.

Let’s look at the reason that a foam mattress can be uncomfortable. Firstly, the foam can compact and become lumpy. Once the foam compacts it looses its ability to spring back it then starts to crumble – creating a dust! But this does take quite a long time to happen.

The reason I like these for kids is simple. Both my boys moved from cots into toddler beds. They were potty trained when in the toddler beds. I started off with plastic sheets on the mattress, but I wasn’t very happy with this arrangement. I was always worried about the ability of these sheets to breathe, and had a concern that they encouraged skin rashes. So I started buying the Pampers disposable mattress covers, I think they are called ‘Bed Mats’. These mattresses covers are brilliant, but I was always worried that the foam wasn’t completely protected. Then I remember the minimal amount I paid for the mattresses and realised that it simply didn’t matter. At any point I could walk to the furnishing place at the end of my road and have a new one cut! Suddenly potty training and staying dry at night became a lot less stressful.

The second thing about kids and foam mattresses is that they never compact. Firstly, the kids are too light to actually completely squash the foam. But secondly, children don’t go to bed and wake up in a similar position. As most parents will have discovered, kids often wake up with their head at the wrong end, hanging half out the bed or simply lying across it – so no one bit of the foam is continually under pressure.

The foam mattress is a great way to minimise the stress that parents have when kids are at the stage of wetting the bed – so don’t write them off. They are a great transition between a cot mattress and an adult mattress.

Foam Mattresses

The Best Uses For Foam Mattresses

The foam mattress has got some bad press in the past – and quite frankly – it deserved it! But now it a good time to review it as the foam mattress has developed and moved gots its place and now that it is sensibly priced it is becoming even more useful.

As far as I can see there are two basic uses for a foam mattress:

Chair or sofa bed with a foam mattress.
These are usually the cheaper end of the sleeper sofa market. They foam is section into two or three segments and it folds up to create the seat of the sofa when the bed is contracted. If this is used a lot as a sofa the foam will compact and when the bed is opened up the foam will not ‘repuff’ up. So this is fine, but not for either a bed or sofa which has continuous or heavy use.

Kids Foam Mattresses
Kids don’t weigh as much as adults, so it takes a lot longer to squash the foam, so the life of a foam mattress for a kid is hence much longer. These mattresses are quite in expensive which is great if you have a potty training toddler, as however, much to try, there is always the odd night-time accident and with a foam mattress you can replace it when the child has learnt to wake up and go to the loo themselves.

The advantages of the foam mattress are that they are very reasonably priced, and there are companies which will cut them to size, so they are great for non standard size beds.

The disadvantages of a foam mattress are firstly that they compact. Once they compact they cease to be very comfortable to sleep on, this is no only because they get harder, but they also tend to become rather uneven.

The other disadvantage of the foam mattress is that they cannot be washed or wiped clean. Hence you will always need to have removable covers or an extra layer of sheets.

Despite the disadvantages the foam mattress does has its uses – primarily for kids. They are a great for toddler beds and for the first ‘big boy’ or ‘big girl’ bed, and for extra sleeping for their friends.