How To Quickly Change Crib Sheets When There’s A Nighttime Nappy Leak

If your baby has a nappy leak in the middle of the night, the traditional options have been to 1) replace the crib sheet with a clean one in the rare case your sleep-deprived brain has remembered to keep a spare, or 2) do laundry and sob. (You can’t just drape any old blanket on the bare mattress and say “see ya in the morning” – it could be a choking hazard.)

Photo: kikovic (Shutterstock)

However, you can can save yourself from either of these situations by making “crib sheet lasagne”. No, I don’t mean you should numb your pee-stained sorrows by stuffing your face with lasagne.

This is how crib sheet lasagne works works (thanks to Asha Dornfest’s Parent Hacks for the catchy name): Before bedtime, you place a waterproof mattress cover on the mattress, and then a regular crib sheet over it, and then another waterproof mattress cover over that, followed by another regular crib sheet. (You can keep going, if you’d like, until it gets too bulky.)

Get it? Multiple layers, like lasagne. Then at night, when your baby has a nappy leak (or gets sick and throws up), you simply pull off the top sheet and mattress cover, toss them in the washing basket, and go back to sleep.

Alternately, you can use puppy training pads in place of waterproof crib sheets. After a leak, just take off the top sheet and throw out the puppy pad, and you’re good to go.

If you’re experiencing a string of leaks, however, you’ll want to address the problem at the nappy level. Try making a double nappy, adding a nappy booster pad, or moving up to the next nappy size.

As a parent, there will be plenty of reasons you’ll be awake in the middle of the night. May leakage not be one of them.