What to do about the mattress if you buy a second-hand Arms Reach Co-sleeper?

[Gillian15]

There have been a few posts about this in the last few years so apologies if I'm repeating questions, but I'm not sure if advice has changed!

Has anyone bought a second-hand Arms Reach co-sleeper and if so can you tell me whether you used the mattress that came with it and if not, what did you do?

I've seen several posts where people have bought a thinner mattress to go on top and this site was recommended babymattressesonline.co.uk/. However, I contacted them and was told it is not safe to have one mattress on top of another – they recommended removing the hard board from the current mattress and attaching to a new mattress. I don't see how this is feasible!

I'm also confused because I thought second-hand mattresses were a no-go because of increased cot death risk, but the NCT website says that a second-hand mattress can be used if it is "clean, dry and free from cracks or tears" (which mine is).

And I've read some posts where people have commented that the Arms Reach mattresses are too hard and have solved this by putting something on top...has advice changed about using one mattress on top of another?

If anyone has had the same problem, I would really appreciate finding out what you did - or if anyone can give me details of a mattress supplier that might help?

Thank you!

I used a Sleepyhead on top of the base mattress, which I scrubbed and bleached to within an inch of its life. Although in the end I sold the Arms Reach back on as our bed was too low for it and I rented a Bednest instead which came with a new mattress.

I did exactly this and got a mattress cut to size from these amazing people.

Cannot rate them highly enough.

Thanks both! Tethersend can you tell me what kind of mattress you got from BabyMattressesOnline, and/or who you spoke to? When I contacted them they weren't very helpful and said that I shouldn't put a mattress on top of another one.

I don't think that the mattress that comes with the Arms Reach is really a mattress, it's more of a base with some padding on. I showed our set up to my HV beforehand DS was born and she agreed it was fine.