Another thing is that my kids have been having nightmares lately. Maybe it’s the ominous chalk drawings over their beds?
In our latest attempt to find a solution to the girls’ bad attitude toward sleep, Jon and I decided it might be a good idea to upgrade them to twin beds. Ever since converting their cribs to toddler beds, they wake up several times a night because they’ve rolled out of bed onto the floor. We’ve tried to solve this by surrounding their cribs with pillows, and then eventually putting the bare crib mattresses on the floor crack-house style, but it’s still happening.
At the same time, we have another looming problem with their beds: we’re moving, and our furniture is going to take a lot longer to get cross-country than we will. So, we thought, what about killing two birds (a terrible, terrible expression) and ordering twin-bed mattresses from Amazon to arrive before we get there? Eventually, my dad, the carpenter, can build us funky wooden beds for them. And then they won’t need new beds again until at least college, right?
That’s why I went down the evil rabbit hole of researching mattresses online. A thing, I now realize, I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Now I know things that I do not want to know, thanks to various holistic parenting and conspiracy theory websites (often the same thing, mind you).
For instance:
- Did you know that the metal coils in standard mattresses probably conduct radiation, which is the real reason we’re all dying of cancer and suffering from dementia? Mattresses. You heard it here first.
- Off-gassing from memory-foam mattresses is about as good for you as lacing all your food with cyanide all the time.
- Wool is healthy and wholesome but also makes an ideal home for bugs, critters, and bacteria—and if it gets wet, it will not dry for all eternity.
- The only way to really make a bed waterproof (crucial with toddlers) is to wrap it in plastic wrap. Seriously. If you’re wrapping an organic mattress in plastic wrap, you have problems, in my opinion.
Basically every single thing I read about mattresses implies that if I buy my kids mattresses, I am a child abuser. There is ONE type of mattress that a few mommy bloggers recommended. It costs $1300 for the base-model twin. But then I have to also buy a waterproof cover, new sheets, and, of course, an organic pillow. Times two.
And, let’s not forget, hire a shaman to take any curses off the mattresses before I let my kids lie on them.
I wonder if toddlers can handle hammocks?
