Easy and safe ways to secure mattress to bed slats?

[SinkGirl]

I posted a little while who about DT2 (age 3, ASD and partially sighted) who’s still in a cot for his own safety, and who started pulling his mattress up and out and jumping on the slats. DT1 also is still in a cot to keep him safe but he doesn’t do this.

We’ve been investigating specialist beds (at a cost of thousands each) because we need to get them out of cots asap. We have been referred for a social care OT assessment to see if they’ll help with funding or write a report that will enable us to seek funding from a charity.

In the meantime, I want them into an alternative urgently before DT2 especially gets hurt. There is a charity that lends specialist beds out but not without the OT report we are still waiting on.

Another SEN mum linked me to a great Australian product - it’s a mesh cover that fits over a specific Ikea bed and can be zipped close. It would be ideal at least as a temporary measure. For the beds, mattresses and covers it’s going to cost me nearly £1000 for two, but that’s better than the £6k I’m looking at for the specialist beds I think we need (they can be packed away and transported so we could actually consider a holiday one day).

My only concern with this option is that the mattress is accessible and can therefore be removed.

As he used to constantly remove his sheets we now put his mattress inside a duvet cover which prevents him from removing it. So I need an option which would work with a mattress that’s enclosed in a duvet cover.

I’m not comfortable with long straps like luggage straps as if he managed to get them free he could strangle himself.

I know you can buy velcro loop fabric so I could put velcro hook tape on the slats. But I would need to make mattress covers that are a sheet on top and loop fabric on the bottom. I am crafty but cannot sew for the life of me even on a machine - I’m useless!

Does anyone have any other hacks / suggestions?

His current mattress is really light so a heavier sprung mattress may solve the issue but I want to have a back up plan - can’t afford to waste £1000!

Could you remove the bed and matress on the floor as a temporary measure or does he need sides for safety

He needs sides, and ideally an enclosed space - we’ve found these mesh covers for a specific Ikea bed which would be perfect at least for a while.

He can be awake for hours (4-5 hrs) in the night, he climbs, mouths, eats wood, he’s partially sighted and struggles in a dark room... keeping him enclosed is the safest for him. It’s just this mattress issue that’s a worry. The very expensive specialist beds have mattresses you can’t get to, but like I say we can’t spend that much - we may be able to get funding but it won’t be quick and I could get all this sorted in a week or two.

You can get adhesive velcro so you wouldn't need to sew. You could stick several short loops of velcro on the bottom side of the duvet cover that you're using as a sheet and wrap the loops around individual slats so its secured in several places and even harder to pull up, plus the loops would not be long enough to wrap around his neck if should ever get access to them.

We've used heavy duty velcro to stick dds mattress to her divan base, it's worked really well

Can’t you superglue the loop half of the Velcro directly to the underside of the mattress at strategic points?

What about short loops with snap fasteners attached to the underside of the duvet cover to loop round the cot slats if you put some at either corner then some more down the middle
If you really can't sew then you could use iron bond web to attach the loops and something like https://www.amazon.co.uk/Iware-Plastic-Buttons-Poppers-Fastener/dp/B0792M33G6/ref=ascdff_B0792M33G6/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=344430176327&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=5445219455899430997&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-714704433747&psc=1 for the snaps
It might be a bit of a faff to put on unlike a purpose built answer but would be cheap to try and you could add more loops if it's too easy for him.

Have you checked what the difference in size between the cots you use and the ikea ones are? Incase they’re the same.
Local alterations shop to sew strips of velcro onto the duvet covers you use?
We’ve got a cuggl cot bed the bottom for its encased in mesh instead of loose slats, not sure if those would work better but we got ours second hand, originally Argos I think by a sticker.
If dc1 doesn’t do it yet could you just do dc2’s until the trial n error phase is over. That would at least half the costs.

Thanks all. I’m just not sure whether adhesive velcro would stick securely to the duvet cover, especially with machine washing.

Maybe I could pay someone to make me up some custom mattress covers for me - should be an easy job sewing on three sides and then some velcro hook tape to fasten the fourth side. That would be really secure.

Or maybe I need to woman up and learn to use a sewing machine 😂

That’s it, fastening lots of loops around the slats would be really tricky. I think the loop fabric on the bottom would be the best bet.

What would be amazing would be a bottom piece of loop fabric with a concealed around the edge, and then top halves made from normal sheets I can just zip on and off so I can leave the mattress in place. Hopefully I can work on my sewing skills and make all sorts of useful things!

Remap might be able to help you - they design and make solutions where they wren't available.

What an amazing charity! They look absolutely fantastic. I think they’d probably be unable to help us as there are options available - we just can’t afford them, and I’m not sure we can fit them in their room so I need to do some investigating. If we can’t find any solutions currently available I will definitely contact them :)

Hi OP, I made a similar suggestion on your last thread but not sure if it got buri d: have you considers getting rid of beds altogether and moving to tents with a mattress inside on the floor? Something with a sewn in groundsheet. Pop up if you can find it or something like the life systems free standing mesh tent. It will fit a mattress and is transparent. It's called an expedition geocentric.
I tried and failed to find a pop up mesh version for you but if you can find a pop up it will be harder to damage

Hi OP, I made a similar suggestion on your last thread but not sure if it got buri d: have you considers getting rid of beds altogether and moving to tents with a mattress inside on the floor? Something with a sewn in groundsheet. Pop up if you can find it or something like the life systems free standing mesh tent. It will fit a mattress and is transparent. It's called an expedition geocentric.
I tried and failed to find a pop up mesh version for you but if you can find a pop up it will be harder to damage

GEONET. Flipping autocorrect!

I may be misunderstanding this, but could you just get a normal but very heavy bed mattress? Some of mine are so heavy I can hardly move them.

If you're keeping the cot could you put the cot base in the duvet cover with the mattress? Then screw the base back in having made holes in the right place and hemmed either sewn or with wonderweb or similar. Would work with my cot but I know some are built differently- we could never take the sides off ours and people obviously do!

Obviously dismantling the cot for every bedding change would be a pain but could work as a quick stopgap...

Thanks @ODFOx - I did look into tents after that thread. I don’t think it would be right for us as we need to be able to keep an eye on them on a video monitor. This solution would be similar but sturdier because of the bed frame underneath and the mesh is see through.

Really appreciate the suggestion though :)

If you're using a duvet on the mattress, then four loops sewn to each corner of the duvet so you can tie around the slats would work

Honestly, I'd buy a cheap mattress and a staple gun. Staple the velcro strips to the slats and long/ expansive bits of velcro stapled to the underside of the mattress.

If you can find someone with a sewing machine, I'm imaging a fitted sheet, with wide strips attached on either end that can be tucked under the slats from head and foot of the bed and then zipped together.

Excuse the god awful drawing but like this:

Can you use a larger duvet cover and put the mattress and slats inside it?

Problem is that his sheets need changing usually every day due to wee leakage so too much dismantling isn’t feasible, especially if I have to change it in the night.

This is why we need beds with an inaccessible mattress but it’s going to take a long time to sort out.

If only he’d just leave his sheets one I could attach velcro to the mattress and the slats, but the duvet cover would be in the way. So it’s either attach velcro to the duvet cover and try to get it in the right place or get some custom made mattress covers with loop fabric on the bottom.

With this bed you can’t access the slats from underneath the bed as it’s boxed in, so trying things around the slats won’t work. Here’s hoping a heavy mattress does the trick!

Could you baby gate /fence off part of the room and put a mattress on the floor? My neighbour did this, mattress on the floor, play pen walls all the way round and she often slept there with her DD.
Weight of the adult would keep the mattress on the ground. Would he be more or less settled with one of you?

Sadly they won’t settle at all with us in the room. If we are in there they get more distressed as they don’t understand why we aren’t just getting them up and out of bed (which we don’t do, but they have no concept of time, day, night). Would love to cosleep but they will not lie down in our bed at all.

We’ve considered using extra tall playpen panels and mattresses on the floor, but I suspect they wouldn’t lie down at all if they can just walk away, plus the risk of them managing to climb out would still be there (they’re ridiculous climbers, very strong too). At present they don’t bother trying to climb out of their cots (I think they like the enclosed nature of them) but we did have to get rid of the (tall) playpen a long time ago when DT1 learned how to use a corner to climb out 🙄

Need to measure up in the morning but looking at it I don’t think two of these beds is going to fit in their room. Two toddler beds followed by bunk beds was the plan but obviously bunk beds is not going to happen. Their room will just about got a double bed and nothing else so it looks like we are going to have to consider moving into their room (and replacing our relatively new lovely king size bed), moving them into ours but would then need something enclosed because we will have to leave furniture in there as there’ll be nowhere else to put any.

Other option is trying to see if they’ll share one of the single enclosed beds for now - their current cots are 60x120cm, this bed is 90x200cm so they could probably top and tail for a while.

Oh god, this is an absolute bloody nightmare. The more I try and figure it out, the more stressed I become.

Won’t solve your problem but have you considered gro bag sheets to help ds feel more secure in his cot.
gro.co.uk/product/gro-to-bed/