Safety 1st Transitions Crib Mattress Review

• Review
• Specs
• Comments

Safety 1st is the make of many of the baby products we see on shelves today. They make everything from pacifiers and thermometers to boosters and baby gates. I am the proud user of many of the products, mostly because they are affordable and well known.

One thing you may not know, is that they make a line of crib mattresses. I wasn’t aware of this either, until I was researching the best crib mattresses. I saw safety 1st pop up and immediately concluded that it needed to be tested, so that’s what I did. Let’s take a look at the safety 1st transitions baby/toddler crib mattress.

You might be interested: The Best Crib Mattresses For Your Baby

Video Review

Don’t want to read the full review? Watch our video review instead.

The Safety 1st Promise

Since the “BABY ON BOARD” sign was created by them, Safety 1st has become a very popular mogul for safety products. They are constantly looking for ways to spread child safety awareness. They promise that their products will give you the power to keep your children safe.

Did you know that the “baby on board” sign isn’t just to tell people that you have a new baby? Contrary to what some think, it’s actually a warning. In the event of an accident, rescuers will see that bright yellow sign and immediately know to search for a child.

This is just one way Safety 1st has contributed to your child’s safety. Another way is by creating this crib mattress as a safe sleeping environment for your baby or toddler.

Presenting The Safety 1st Transitions Crib Mattress

The Safety 1st transitions is a dual sided mattress, one side for babies and the other side for toddlers. Each side has its own level of ideal support, helping with the development of walking, crawling, rocking, rolling, and standing.

This mattress meets federal flammability standards without using potentially harmful chemicals and has a Greenguard Gold certification for indoor air quality. It’s also PVC free and wipes, water resistant, and wipes clean.

Thoughts About The Packaging

As with most of the other mattresses I get, this one was wrapped in plastic inside of an unmarked brown box. Once I pulled it out of the box, I was greeted by a smiling baby with some valuable information about the mattress.

I’m the type of person that likes to see information about the product that I am about to use without going on the internet to find it. It’s super convenient for me just to be able to view an insert that has quick, but valuable, informational points.

Features & Benefits

This is the area in which I get into major detail about the Safety 1st Transitions crib mattress. I’ve done extensive tests on this and I am here to share all of my findings with you. Some of these tests include how much heat the mattress holds, whether it has bounce or not, if it’s really water resistant, and more.

What Sets It Apart?

Other mattress companies just make the mattress, nothing else. So why should I entrust the safety of my child in their hands? You see, as I mentioned earlier, Safety 1st is the leader in child safety products. They put more than enough time and energy into providing their consumers with products that help keep our children out of harm’s way.

They are the makers of cabinet locks, toilet locks, baby gates, thermometers, nail clippers, and the list goes on and on. Do other mattress companies make products such as these? As far as I can tell, not many do. This is what makes Safety 1st so unique in the mattress world and why I trust them to provide me with a safe sleeping surface for my child.

Construction & Composition

The Safety 1st Transitions has 2 simple layers:

The water resistant cover is free from PVC’s and wipes away messes easily. The cover does have a zipper can can be removed, but not easily. I did manage to remove it and toss it in the washer, although not recommended, because my son made an absolute mess on it and it did not wipe up as easily as advertised. I honestly had choice but to toss it in the washer. I ran it through a wash and dry cycle twice without shrinking. This was done on a delicate cycle with cold water.

The high-density thermo-bonded fiber core is 100% polyester. This layer has two different firmness levels. On one side, you have a super firm surface for the proper support of infants. On the other side, you have an extra comfort layer for your toddler’s comfort. It’s still supportive, but also comfortable. This foam is Greenguard Gold Certified as healthy for your child to sleep on.

You might be interested: Foam Vs. Foil Crib Mattresses 

Comfort

My son seemed to sleep comfortably on this mattress, as long as there was a sheet on it. I like to test my mattress with and without a sheet to observe the sound it makes and whether or not there was a difference in his sleeping pattern. He didn’t sleep any different on it with or without a crib sheet. The only comment I have about him not sleeping on a sheet is that it is a little noisy when he moves around.

The nice thing about this mattress is that it has an extra comfort layer for toddlers since the infant side may be too firm for them. I did feel a difference within each side and my son definitely slept better on the toddler side.

Overall, I think that this was a pretty comfortable mattress for him. His tossing and turning was reduced, he was sleeping longer, and he was happy when he woke up, indicating a good night’s sleep.

Support

In my opinion, the support of the mattress is great. I did not see my son sinking in or bouncing around too much. This definitely has an ideal support level for both babies and toddlers. The high density foam plays a huge role in this equation. If a mattress doesn’t offer much density, it’s probably not going to give the support a growing child needs.

The thing with support is that it helps your child through their development such as rocking, rolling, standing, walking, and other milestones. If a mattress is squishy and bouncy, it may be harder for your baby to learn how to balance on their hands and knees.

The other thing that supportive mattresses offer is a lower SIDS risk. If your child is sinking into their mattress, especially if they are too little to roll over or turn their heads, it could pose a suffocation risk, we don’t want that. This is why a supportive mattress is needed.

Go ahead and take a gander at the pictures I took. I placed a 16 pound bowling ball on the mattress to show how much it sinks in on each side.

The Two Finger Test

The reason I do the two-finger test is to ensure the mattress has a snug risk and doesn’t pose an entrapment risk. If you have a mattress that is too small for your crib and more than two fingers can be placed between the mattress and rails, it’s a big enough gap to trap your baby in if they roll over there.

You can perform this test on your own. All you need to do is take your pointer and middle finger, place it between the mattress and rails, and if you can fit another finger in there, the mattress is too small. This is something that pediatricians, scientists, and parents do all over the world.

So, how did this mattress do with the test? It passed with flying colors. If you check out the picture, you can see that my fingers don’t fit in there at all. This is a good sign that the mattress belongs in that crib and there are no indications of entrapment.

Edge Support

Edge support is something that I like to look for when it comes to my mattresses. Why? Because as I mentioned above, if a baby gets too close to the edge of a mattress and there’s a gap big enough for entrapment, the SIDS risk increases dramatically. This risk is heightened even more if there isn’t enough edge support to keep your child on the mattress.

Also, when it comes time for your toddler to get into a toddler bed, the edge support helps to keep them on the mattress. If they roll over close enough to the edge, much like a baby, the could get sucked right off of the bed from the edge support giving away. So if a mattress has optimal edge support, they are more likely to stay on the mattress.

The Safety 1st Transitions has pretty good edge support on both sides. Since the toddler side has more cushion than the infant side, there was a small lack in edge support, but nothing that is going to cause any major problems. You can check the pictures out below.

Corners

It’s not something that a lot of people take into consideration when looking for a crib mattress, but what they don’t know is that it can make a huge difference when it comes to the way it fits. In my experience, mattresses with rounded corners don’t have that snug fit like the ones with square corners do. Unless they fit really tight on the sides, the mattress moves around on the bottoms.

This mattress has square corners, which i’m a fan of, unless they have sharp edges, which this one doesn’t. I have seen mattresses that had really sharp edges that were even a little rough for me to comfortably touch. Even though this one has the square corners, the tips are rounded off so they aren’t sharp.

Water Resistance Test

Seams

I can’t tell you how many times I have caught one or more of my children pulling on loose thread. Even after 7 years of parenting, I still don’t understand what their infatuation with it is. When my toddler sees a loose thread, he sees a new toy, which is why I check all of my mattresses over for loose threads and tight seams.

Babies and toddlers are known for swallowing random objects, trust me on this one. If a child swallows thread, they’ll most likely pass it a few hours later, like everything else. But, there is always that slight chance that it ends up getting lodged or wrapped around something somewhere in their body. This can cause potentially dangerous medical problems.

So, upon my investigation of the Safety 1st Transitions crib mattress, I was unable to locate any loose threads and all seams were tight. The zipper worked the way it should and the seams in the pattern of the cover were nice and tight. No safety risks here.

Ease Of Transport

One thing that I can really appreciate about a mattress is how lightweight it is. I’m not one to be completely “with it” when it comes to those late night crib sheet changes and the last thing I want to do is lift a heavy mattress out of the crib.

The good thing about this mattress is that it is super lightweight. It only weighs around 7 pounds, which is awesome for me. I can easily pick it up out of the crib to clean it and put it back in without a struggle.

How Does It Feel?

Unfortunately, this is another one of those mattresses that feels kind of like a backpack. It’s kind of rough and scratchy. My son didn’t seem to mind it, but I know I wouldn’t want to sleep on something like that.

I suppose the material that the cover is made from feels this way because of the water resistance nature. Overall, it isn’t as bad as some other ones I have tested, but it’s still less than desirable.

Bounce

The infant side of the mattress had just enough bounce to not seem like it was too firm. This, to me, gives the indication that the mattress has the proper amount of support that is needed for a baby to sleep on.

The toddler side had a little more bounce than the infant side. This indicated that the mattress still had support while not being too firm. It isn’t bouncy enough to disrupt my child’s sleeping, but it was also not too firm for him to sleep on.

Check out the videos, you can see the bounce results for each side.

Heat Regulation Features

This mattress doesn’t have any specific heat regulation features, which is kind of disappointing. My son is a hot sleeper and I need to make sure he isn’t overheating while he is sleeping. He tends to get really sweaty and it wakes him up.

Even though this particular mattress doesn’t have any of those fancy features, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it holds heat. Let’s see if it does.

Heat Retention

I took my trusty temperature and heating sock to this mattress. I warmed one spot up to 130 degrees, actually higher but we don’t start timing it until it reaches 130, and timed how long it took to get to 98 degrees. So how did it do?

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this mattress does, infact, hold heat. This is something that I expected to happen because of what the mattress is made from. The infant side took 41 seconds to cool down and the toddler side took about 38 seconds. The average is between 20-25 for all of the mattresses I have tested so far, so this is definitely above average.

Now, just because this one holds quite a bit of heat, it doesn’t mean that your child is going to overhead. It is a good possibility, but if your room stays cool like mine, they should be okay. My son was fine on it, but my room is usually at 65 degrees. It actually may be a good thing that the mattress holds heat in the warmer months. If your house gets cold, your baby will still be warm.

Odor

I have read complaints about the mattress having an odor when coming out of the packaging. I just want to say that there was absolutely no odor to this mattress. The only thing that was a little smelly was the plastic that it was wrapped in.

Feedback From Other Consumers (Parents & Caregivers)

Here are some comments about the Safety 1st Transitions that other users had.

Construction & Composition

• Tightly knitted cover
• Seams are tight
• Great quality

Support

• Great support for infants
• Equally good support for toddlers
• Holds heavy dogs (when used as dog beds)

Comfort For Baby

• Babies sleep through the night
• Less tossing and turning

Comfort For Toddler

• Toddlers falling asleep quicker
• Less movement while sleeping

Water Resistance

• Water resistance holds true
• Accidents were easy to clean

Ease Of Movement

• Lightweight nature makes it portable
• Easy to take out of cribs
• Easy to place back in the crib

Breathability

• Some complaints of sweating
• Not very breathable

You might be interested: How Long To Crib Mattresses Last?

Is the Safety 1st Transitions Crib Mattress The Right Fit For Your Baby/Toddler?

If you say yes to any of these categories, than this mattress may be the right fit for you and your baby.

Are You On A Budget?

This is one of the better crib mattresses that cost under $100. You’re getting something from a company that is known for their high safety standards and safety products.

Do You Want easy Cleanup?

This mattress is easy to clean and honestly, if you really need to, you can throw it in the washer. I did and it came out just fine. It’s quite difficult to remove the cover, but it’s worth it, especially if you want to preserve the look and feel of the cover.

Do You Want To Use It For A Toddler?

The point of this mattress is to provide your child with an easy transition to a toddler bed. This mattress can be used for infants and toddlers up to 50 pounds. You can easily move it from the crib to a toddler bed and you won’t have to fork out that extra dough for a toddler mattress.

Conclusion

For a cheap mattress, it’s got some pretty great qualities to it. It’s going to last for quite a few years if you take care of it and it won’t cost you everything you have in your wallet. I like the fact that the make of it is someone I have heard of and someone who knows how important my child’s safety is to me. It gives children the proper support they need, it’s made from good quality materials, and it’s accommodating to toddlers. I recommend this to those who are either in a pinch for a new mattress or on a budget while also looking for something safe and comfortable for their child.

You might be interested: The Best Crib Mattress Pads

Safety 1st Promise Specs

Material	Organic	Degassing Period	Firmness Level for Baby	Firmness Level for Toddler	Weight	Warranty	Cost
Polyester	No	None	8	7	8	2 years	$