Mattress for the Graco Pack ‘n Play Elite with Newborn Napper

So we bought the Graco Pack ‘n Play Elite which comes with a changing station and a napper. The Pack n Plays usually comes with a mat (I wouldn’t even call it a mattress) which is foldable (as is the Pack n Play) but this mat is like something just a little thicker than a yoga mat. Not the best if you intend to use it for baby to sleep on.

Picture from www.dearbaby.com.sg

Anyway, as we bought the Pack n Play from the Takashimaya Baby Fair (supplier: Aprisin), we decided at the spur of the moment to buy the latex mattress for another SGD80 that they were offering there as well. Now this mattress is one of those with holes and is very soft, so why we even bothered to buy it, I don’t know. Actually, I do know. I hadn’t done my research at the time, and out of sheer desperation, decided that it was a good buy.

Fast forward a few months later, I’d come to the conclusion that we needed a mattress which was thicker, and provided more support than the one we’d bought. Nevermind the fact that the original mattress and Pack n Play hadn’t even been delivered to us yet.

After a very thorough and depressing search on Google.com.sg, I concluded that there are no places selling mattresses for the Graco Pack n Play in Singapore. Nothing which was made to fit it specifically anyway. Mummies on forums said that they went to places like Kiddy Palace or Baby Kingdom and bought mattresses which kinda fit, and made do with rolled-up towels by the side. That wasn’t what I wanted, so the search continued.

Then, somehow, I stumbled upon the online Tardis and Mary Poppin’s bag that is Amazon. I’m telling you, if you can’t find something on Amazon, it probably doesn’t exist. The only limitation is whether or not that item can be delivered to where you want it to be delivered. If not, there is always VPost. If you don’t know what this is, it’s basically a service provided by SingPost (there are similar service providers out there too) whereby you can buy something from, say, USA, and get it shipped to a USA address supplied by VPost (each customer is assigned a unique ID), and you pay for the item to be shipped from that address back to Singapore. Very useful for those sites which do not ship out of their local country.

Back to the story. So I found a whole series of mattresses called the Dream On Me series, which are made specifically to fit the Graco Pack n Play. The one I finally decided to buy was the Dream On Me 3" Extra Firm Playard Mattress. Reviews said that it fit the Graco Pack n Play and that it wasn’t as “firm” as they thought it’d be, so that was good enough for me.

Picture from www.amazon.com

The estimated delivery date was around 10 days from my purchase date, but hey, Amazon being the amazing company that they are, delivered the item to me on the Friday evening after the Monday when I’d ordered it. I don’t know how they got it here so quickly, as most local mail take longer than that, so these guys (and DHL) have got their service standards spick and span.

Review? The Dream On Me 3 inch firm mattress fits the Pack n Play Elite just right. There are other models of the Pack n Play, and from what I’ve seen, the measurements vary by half an inch here and there, but I reckon it should fit the other models OK too. It’s definitely not super firm, but it feels just right for a mattress. It’s light (around 3.5 pounds) and for around US$37, I definitely couldn’t find anything cheaper than that in Singapore. Even with the delivery fee (I’d bought the sheets for it and other stuff too), it still worked out less than the hundred and more dollars it would have cost for me to purchase a similar (non-fitting) mattress in Singapore.