Keeping carpet & bed clean for home birth

[Cordelia Lynn]

Hello ladies!

This will be my first home birth and I'm trying to be prepared so that we don't stain our white carpet or our new bed mattresses.

I bought several shower curtain liners from the dollar tree - but I am wondering if anybody has used them for this purposed and if they are effective?

We have an unusually sized bed: split california king - so getting extra sheets or finding "an old set" is impossible. Our current set was over $100 so I really want to protect it.

I'm just planning on putting the shower curtains over my fresh sheets, and then covering those with old sheets or towels (nothing will be a snug fit so it'll kind of be a mess.) I'm not planning birthing in the bed anyway (we have a birth pool set up) but I wanted to be prepared, just incase.

any other ideas? Thanks in advance!!

 

[TattiesMum]

I bought a cheap plastic 'dustsheet' from my local DIY store to protect the mattress (you could always do the same for the carpet too) ...

I also picked up loads of old sheets from charity shops (I just threw them away afterwards) - they didn't fit the bed, but that's ideal as the midwives like to be able to remove them easily I put some on the bed and floor and kept others in a pile as replacements.

In truth though there really wasn't much mess at all - I think hospital midwives make much more mess than they need to because someone else gets to clean up - like professional chefs

 

[emera35]

I agree, there wasn't all that much mess really. We had dust sheets (big plastic ones) to cover the carpet and bed (i'm sure shower curtains will do fine too), although everything happened VERY fast and so in the end i had a maternity bed pad and a towel shoved under me when i gave birth. Once the midwives eventually arrived and helped with the 3rd stage we put the plastic sheet on the floor, as the bed was already a bit trashed! We whipped the sheet and undersheet off and put them to wash right away on a hot wash with some oxybleach and they've come up good as new! I was surprised, but it seems it does wash out fine, as alot of the mess is effectively just waters there wasn't so much there to make stains.

 

[PaganBride]

There wasn't much mess for us either. I bought a piece of vinyl table covering big enough for the floor, to put the pool on. Also, a side note, not all shower curtains are completely water proof, so make sure the ones you have are.

 

[mum2jess]

I didn't have time to get anything down to protect the floor, but there was no mess at all really. The midwives were great at putting inco pads down and containing any mess.

 

[ljo1984]

I'd do what your doing with shower curtains and old sheets, if your not fussed for them after you can always just chuck them straight out then get into bed. But midwife will be well stacked with inco sheets too. X