Cotton Crib Mattresses: Green Is the Only Way

Update: What you see is not what you get: read about the Pixel Organics bait-and-switch scam we experienced.

We started searching for a cotton crib mattress (one that has no vinyl or plastic cover) because the youngest of the family is finicky and can't sleep on plastic (same as the father, by the way). These are not unheard from in Europe: this summer we've got a cotton cover mattress in 3 out of 3 places we've been: the Hilton we stayed in Edinburgh, the apartment we rented in Barcelona and the one borrowed from a friend back home. We thought this search was going to be easy, but... Apparently all kids smoke in bed and besides flame-retardant pajamas they also need a flame-retardant bed. When they do not smoke, they soil the bed so hard that waterproof cotton can't handle it and the mattress has to be hosed down (hopefully the baby is hand washed separately...).

So if you try to search for "cotton cover crib mattress" you see that the offering is small and, between the fully plastic and fully organic there is no product in between. There are 2 choices:

- Naturepedic offers a cotton cover mattress as their top of the line product; they also offer many versions of waterproof ones, probably for those that have never heard of waterproof cotton or with babies that smoke in bed...
- Pure Rest offers many mattresses, including the baby one (and you'll see that they have a large number of resellers that do not acknowledge where the mattress comes from, but you'll see the picture I've included, a picture that comes from the Pure Rest website. Most notably, the Pixel Organic mattress is made by Pure Rest; we know because we visited a store that thought was selling a Pure Rest and we though we were seeing a Pixel Organic. The Pixel Organic website does not say it directly, they slip and they mention Pure Rest on the guts of the web page:

"Natural rubber core:
Known for its hypoallergenic qualities being resistance to molds, mildews and dust mites our natural rubber is the only commercially available rubber that is 100% chemical free. No other latex meets our high expectations of freedom from chemicals. Only natural vegetable based soaps are used for washing. To support this claim Pure-Rest used an independent testing lab available to confirm all used rubber was 100% chemical free."

Aha: Pure Rest...

There is a Canadian company (SleepTech) but we have not figured out whether they distribute their mattresses in the US and we did not bother calling. There are probably others. Please leave comments with your source and I'll update the post.

The cotton covered mattresse come in 2 main models: with coils (like your mattress, only smaller) and with latex core (like the ones we've seen in Europe); we've got the one with coils because it's cheaper and firmer. This is the store with the good deal and availability: CSN Baby and with the decency to tell exactly what they're selling. (I got annoyed by the fact that most resellers try to hide the producer name and that the descriptions are so contradictory; no serious seller on Amazon.com, all descriptions sound made up; the prices sound better in places, but who knows what you get?). These are expensive ($300) compared to the hose-down smoke-in-bed filled plastic bag you get everywhere. And, sadly, Ikea is not any better either.

We did not intend this to be necessarily green, plastic-free would have been enough. Apparently we've all been so brain-washed that there's no middle ground and none sells a decent cotton cover mattress; so, a green one it is.

What's your experience? Leave a comment, if there are good finds I'll do an update to this.