The thing that was great about the Pack 'n Play, which I will eventually dedicate a post to one of these days, is that its "mattress" sheets were really easy to switch out and the "mattress" (in quotes because it's more like a foldable, cushiony rectangle) was extremely easy to clean (and then dried quickly). That's not exactly the case with the crib mattress, though. The crib mattress is thick, heavy, and fits very snugly into the crib (as it should, obviously). When you're already dealing with sore wrists and weak upper-body issues like I am, it's pretty much a full-on workout to change the crib's fitted sheets.
And OF COURSE Baba G is making sure that he pees through his diapers and pajamas and/or spits up majorly on his crib sheets approximately every other day.
The fifth time I was changing the sheets, I remembered I'd read about (and subsequently bought) the Ultimate Crib Sheet. It's this thick sheet of material with a bunch of snaps that you fasten on top of a crib's fitted sheets, like so:
 |
| Cute fitted sheets are still visible |
 |
| There are between 8 and 12 fasteners you can snap on like so |
When the Ultimate Crib Sheet gets wet/gross/otherwise nasty, you unsnap all the snaps and voila! A fresh and clean fitted sheet awaits your bundle of joy.
 |
| This sheet looks ripe for peein' on! |
 |
| I'll get in a workout of Baby Push-Ups before I destroy this clean sheet |
The Bottom Line: No, the Ultimate Crib Sheet isn't going to save you a ton of laundry loads or anything, but it might just save your sanity on a particularly stressful evening to know that you aren't going to have to wrestle with the mattress before your bundle of joy can take a nap or go to sleep for the night. It costs about $17.
If you look at the Amazon reviews, you'll see the vast majority of people love this product. But if you focus on the negative reviews, you might not notice (like I didn't at first) that the majority of them were submitted between 5 to 10 years ago, when the product had a totally different design. While I'll certainly provide an update if we end up having any issues with the Crib Sheet, I will say that 1) we air-dried it in order to avoid it shrinking or pilling, and 2) the snaps really require some effort to unsnap, so I am not worried at all about BG having the power to pull them apart any time soon.
Unless he keeps doing those push-ups.
