About my mattress?

[SinkGirl]

I will try not to bias this with too much detail, so in a nutshell.

Relative comes to stay with their partner and a 5 year old (not their child, another family member).

Living in a very small house with disabled kids who can’t be moved out of their room, I offer the adults our bed and buy an inflatable child’s bed and sleeping bag to go on the floor next to their bed, and DH and I sleep on the sofa.

It’s our wedding anniversary and the guests kindly offer to babysit so we can go out for a meal for the first time in a year - amazing, super grateful.

Get home. They go to bed. We sleep on the sofa.

Next morning visitor says the little one has had an accident - no problem, that’s what five year olds do, which is why I bought a bed that’s machine washable.

Oh no - she slept in our bed, but it’s okay because she’s stripped the bed, it’s no problem. I was rushing one of my kids out the door to a hospital appointment so I just bunged the sheets in the wash and left. No more was said.

Got home, relatives leave and I go upstairs - our new and expensive mattress is soaked through with pee, as is the duvet which has been left on another part of the bed causing another wee patch.

I’ve spent three days now trying everything I can to get the wee out and it’s not happening. It stinks. Our room stinks.

Relative has said nothing about it at all. If it were me I’d be mortified and asking what I could do to fix it. This has annoyed me more than the accident - although that’s super annoying because it could have been avoided by just putting the 5 year old in the bed i bought for her. She never even lay on it, she was put straight to bed in our bed.

AIBU to be so bloody annoyed? I am going to try and find someone to professionally clean it tomorrow but will probably need to replace it.

I would be annoyed too. Especially since you had bought a bed specifically for the child, the parents must have known this may happen. I hope you manage to get it cleaned, I have no advice.

I think you need to be having words about this one. They've failed on several fronts here. Not just failing to use the bed provided, but not dealing with the mess properly or quickly enough and also not telling you the full extent or making any offer of helping to fix. It's absolutely not on and babysitting or not, they should be offering to help put this right.

Thank you - I’m glad I’m not being unreasonable. DH is royally pissed off too. If she’d told us the extent of the issue at the time maybe it would have made a difference and DH could have started on the clean yo while I was out? I don’t know. Just annoyed that I spent money on a separate bed I could have easily cleaned had this happened. It’s the first time we’ve ever let anyone use our room (until recently we had the most uncomfortable mattress on earth, and I saved up to replace it).

There are lots of ways to get wee out of mattress. I think bicarb of soda is one.
Really annoying though.

Bicarb was the first thing I tried, after soaking up as much as I can by covering in kitchen towel and standing on it. I’ve used bio detergent, spray for cat pee, a steam cleaner. It’s quite a thick mattress and mainly memory foam and I fear it’s just impossible to get it out of the middle of the mattress. I’ll try a professional cleaning service but think it’s probably wasted money.

Accidents happen with kids and peeing so I’m not upset it happened but the mattress being ruined unnecessarily is just so annoying - and the complete lack of giving a shit has annoyed me more.

I'd tell them straight that it hasn't come out and they will have to replace it. You gave them a washable bed for the child for this very reason and they didn't use it and now you have a ruined bed.

In my opinion as you didn't specify that this child was not allowed into your bed then you are being unreasonable, and the intensity of emotion is more about your irritation that you didn't put more controls on the situation beforehand.

Why would I think the child would sleep in my bed? The adults with her were not her parents, and even if they were I’d expect them to tell me if this was the plan so I could make arrangements (eg buy a mattress protector). I told them I was buying a separate inflatable bed for her and was told that would be ideal.

I would be cross too Op...getting pee out of a memory foam never worked for me and mine was only my youngest daughters single mattress..I binned it and bought another.It was horrible after a couple of accidents.Not so easy to find money to replace your mattress though I should imagine.Just a random thought and I dont know at all if this would be possible but could you claim for accidental damage on your contents insurance? Might not cover this kind of thing but might be worth a look.Lesson learned though dont be so kind again!

as you didn't specify that this child was not allowed into your bed then you are being unreasonable
Total tripe. They shouldn't be absolved of all common sense, when it's blatantly obvious the bed provided specifically for the child should have been used, just because they weren't handed a written notice formally prohibiting use of the main bed. How about a little personal responsibility for God's sake? And then, to do sod all about the soaked mattress?? No way is OP unreasonable here.

I would be telling them they need to replace it

I don’t think they could afford to replace it and feel bad asking. It’s just the way it was brushed over and they left without me realising it was so bad, and without at least asking if it was sortable or offering to help clean it up while I was at the hospital.

Maybe it’s because I’m totally the other way - I offered to pay to have my sister’s sofa cleaned because a bit of milk dripped out of my toddler’s bottle onto it, even though she told me not to worry and they’ve cleaned worse off it, I still felt bad.

Why are an adult couple sleeping with a child that is not theirs in their bed?

It was my MIL and our niece (her granddaughter) - she’s been very involved as SIL was a single mum until she was about 3. MIL’s partner ended up sleeping on the tiny inflatable bed (poor bugger, can’t have been very comfy) because she was asleep and MIL didn’t want to move her (so why put her in the bed in the first place).

Obviously this isn’t how I planned or expected things to go. MIL suggested we put DN in with my two but that’s not feasible as my two don’t sleep much, and would have kept her up all night.

I didn’t want to mention it was MIL in case people thought I’m just MIL bashing. We rarely see her and I don’t want to cause a problem.

That's an appalling way to treat your hospitality, and then to just carelessly toss the pissy duvet aside to further soil your mattress and not taking ownership.

I would not be having them to stay again to ruin more of my stuff, and I'd tell them why.

I know how you feel OP. We had friends stay...the guy got really drunk and vomited everywhere in the bedroom. We had to throw out the covers, duvet, pillows and mattress protector. There was no way to get them clean. His gf woke me, and told me she would sleep on our sofa and I could look after him (she got short shrift). They were told exactly what i thought of them and will never stay here again.

I didn’t want them to have to sleep on the sofa and I thought I was being nice by giving them our room (and super comfy new bed) but lesson learned. I would never leave someone’s furniture in a state without trying to sort it out at least but clearly not everyone thinks that way.

Indicative I didn’t mean to be dismissive above, I got DH to check with SIL that she was okay with DN sharing a room with them, as I know I might feel uncomfortable about it.

I definitely didn’t foresee this happening which is possibly naïveté on my part. My twins won’t get into our bed at all (they are both autistic) so it stupidly didn’t occur to me she would.

magic that’s awful - I would be so angry!

Dog wee cleaner is good as it attacks the enzymes. Also (and I know it is too late now) but a waterproof mattress protector is a really good buy. They don't rustle or anything! We bought one when I was pregnant in case my waters broke in bed and I've bought more since - useful when my little girl was sick in our bed and for a nappy leak. I'd not be without them now.

I think they should pay you a contribution towards new mattress even if they can’t afford to replace it.

For future reference, if you spill or wee on a mattress the way to get it out is to flip it upside down as soon as possible on top of an absorbent towel. You then switch out the towel to draw the pee put using gravity. The liquid then is pulled out by gravity.
Standing on it with a towel most probably made it worse as you added your weight + gravity to push the pee into the core of the mattress. I doubt you’ll be able to get it professionally cleaned since you did that.

Yes, I definitely will! My boys are still in nappies and don’t get into our bed - I would love nothing more than early morning cuddles when they wake at 4am so hopefully one day I’ll need it for that reason!

Makes sense - unfortunately not one of 20+ websites I looked at suggested that, wish I’d posted before I did anything! The whole stand on the mattress thing was mentioned multiple times. Sigh.

If the child does not normally wet the bed, so it was a genuine unforeseeable accident, then I don't think the adults were at fault. I wouldn't have any expectations about where a child might sleep, many children share a bed with parents or other relatives, whether regularly or occasionally. I would be upset with how the accident was dealt with afterwards though.