My husband and I bought our first queen mattress when I was pregnant with my younger daughter. It was excellent — firm, yet soft, and quiet (no residual jouncing from a partner’s tossing and turning) — but after fifteen years, it started to get a little lumpy and misshapen, and we noticed we weren’t sleeping as well.
Reluctant to spring for a new mattress — they’re pricey! — we got a secondhand one from a friend for free. Right away we noticed that there were dips in the mattress from the two previous sleepers, but the much more serious problem was the hump dividing the two halves. I’d never thought of my husband and me as cuddly sleepers, but after a few weeks of sleeping with Mount Everest between us, I began to feel lonely and disconnected. The thought of sleeping without touching each other, for months and months and months, kind of broke my heart.
So then we bought one of the foam puff-up mattresses from Costco. It had great reviews and was on special for $500 (with free returns). It’d be great if we could love a cheaper mattress, I thought, but within a couple weeks I started to notice a pronounced sinking. There might not have been a mountain between us any longer, but not matter: I could hardly extricate myself from my foam hole, let alone climb mountains. We returned the mattress (and knowing that most returned items, at least Amazon returns, end up in a landfill, it was not a good feeling).
Next, a mattress store. My husband and I played like Goldilocks for awhile before finally settling on a Kingsdown Le Claire Queen. It was quite firm: my husband thought it was too firm but I was still traumatized from that sinking-hole feeling I’d gotten from the Costco cheapie, and besides, I pointed out, You nap on the floor so you obviously like firm sleeping conditions. The salesman said we shouldn’t notice each other’s restless tossing since the two halves of the mattress had separate spring networks — they weren’t connected at all.
“But we’re not going to notice an actual divide, right?” I said. “We want the bed to be completely flat between us.”
“Oh no, absolutely not,” he said. “There’s no way you can feel that.”
Long story short: we absolutely do feel a dividing hump, and the bed is so firm we wake up sore. So here we are, out 1500 hundred dollars for a back-(and marriage)-breaking mattress, no returns.
The thought of sleeping separately, and uncomfortably, for the next twenty years is truly unbearable, so for a few months I refused to think about it. We’d adjust, or somehow the bed would magically improve, but three months later, I’m done. The mattress is a problem and we have to fix it.
My solution: a mattress topper. From my research, I see there’s the memory foam kind (like this) or the fitted sheet kind (like this). My husband can hardly stand the thought of spending more money, but what else is there to do? I can only wallow in regret for so long. Plus, good sleep is a necessity. (And it occurs to me that there might be a silver lining: top our high-quality, uncomfortable mattress with a nice soft pad and the mattress might last us a good thirty or forty years, which means that, even with a fluffy, new mattress pad every ten years or so, we’d still be saving money, take that, Kingsdown Le Claire.)
Anyway. Long, LONG story short: have you ever attempted to improve a too-hard mattress with a soft topper. If so, did it work? Any recommendations or advice? We’re aiming for something that’s soft but not too soft, durable, and — considering summer and menopause are just ahead — not too hot.
This same time, years previous: for the love of pie, the quotidian (3.9.20), another adventure!, Shannon’s creamy broccoli soup, the singing bowl, the quotidian (3.9.15), black bean and sweet potato chili, perfect pretzels, with a side of poison, honks, chirps, and coughs.
