A couple people wanted to know about the new memory foam mattress I mentioned earlier.
We purchased the mattress from Overstock.com. It was $599 but I had a 10% off code which made it $540. That seems like a lot to spend on a chunk of foam, but the Tempurpedic mattresses are over $2,000 which made this seem like a good deal.
The DHL tracking showed that it was expected to arrive tomorrow, but it acutally got here Friday.
It arrived compressed and rolled up into a big canvas bag:
It would have been easiest to cut the bag open to get it out, but for some reason, I thought that bag might be handy for something. So, I fought and struggled with the thing until I got the mattress out of it.
It looks like you could almost fit a body in there. Any body need a big, black canvas bag for anything?
After getting it out of the bag, it looked like this:
It was vacuum packed in that plastic bag. Once I cut the bag open, it slowly began to expand. After a couple hours, it looked like this:
We let is sit overnight and by Saturday morning, it was fully expanded to this. The website says it is 14" thick. At this point it measured 13".
This is our old waterbed base is where the mattress is now placed:
I did have to add a 5" wide board to make the platform wide enough for the new mattress as queen water beds are a little narrower than regular queen mattresses. This acutally worked very well for what we have. We really needed to keep the under bed drawers. They are really big and hold a lot of stuff.
We've slept on the bed two nights now. I can't say I'm in love with it yet, but it is certainly better than the mattress we were sleeping on before. I think it will just take getting used to as it feels a little weird.
The thing about memory foam is that after you lay down, it takes a few minutes for it to compress and fit to you.
The weird thing for me is that after you lay in one spot for a while, you sink in and it makes an imprint of you in the foam. When you go to move or turn over, the foam comes back, but not instantly. If you try to turn over just a 1/4 turn or something, you tend to fall back into the impression that is left from where you were before. It takes a few more minutes for the foam to readust.
If you mainly sleep on your back, this memory foam stuff is AWESOME. It really conforms to you and removes all pressure spots. You really can't feel any more pressure in one area of your back than any other.
I rarely sleep on my back because when I do, I get congested. I mostly sleep on my side. The problem I was having with the old mattress is that sleeping on my side was causing my arms and shoulders to hurt. This mattress has helped that. My arms and shoulders feel much better now . . . I do however now wake up with just a little "pain" in my lower back. I don't even want to call it "pain" because its certainly not bad, and it goes away a few mintues after I get up and get to moving around. I think that will go away after I get used to it. I almost wonder if I'm sleeping better and the back stiffness is from not moving around as much during the night.
My wife is really happy with it. She has been having trouble with her hip hurting on whichever side she is laying on. The last two mornings, she has woke up pain free in that aspect.
So, thats what I know so far. I want to give it a couple more weeks to get used to it and then see what I think about it. My wife is sold on it already, I think I will be too once I adjust to it.
I'm really considering getting this, and my Mom has slept on her couch for ten years because they can't get a mattress up to her bedroom, so she could use one of these too!
Keep us updated Web!
By the way, what size is your bed? Mine is a Queen, this looks larger, so maybe mine wouldn't be so heavy!
That I don't know because I have no experience with the more expensive ones.
A good friend of mine (who doesn't live close) has the "real" Tempurpedic one. He said when they tried them out, he could tell a difference between the Tempurpedic and the cheaper ones. I couldn't imagine that it feels 4x better at 4x the cost, but I don't know.
He said that he researched it and that Tempurpedic does something special to the foam but they didn't patent it because they would have to tell what that secret is.
I really can't say if it is "as good" as the more expensive ones. I just know its better than what we had.
I have a feather filled pillow top I bought a few months ago. If I laid that accross the top of the foam that would probably take away or reduce that "crater effect" you were talking about right?
I would think you would be able to get it up to her bedroom while still rolled up. Its heavier than you would think it should be, you would want help getting it up there. I could pick it up by myself while still rolled up, but once expanded, it was hard to handle because it has no handles.
i might have to keep this in mind. my hubby has problems with his shoulders and arms hurting when he sleeps, and i have problems with my lower back and hips (as my mom says, it's heck getting old). we purchased a new mattress set a year or so ago, but it didn't help.
give us another update after y'all have slept on it a couple weeks!
__________________
You should fear anything that can bleed for seven days without dying... (as told to Mr. DS on 3-12-10)
I would expect the pillow top would not be good on the memory foam. It wouldn't hurt anything, but the point of the memory foam is that it conforms to every bump on your body. Anything thick on top of that would reduce the effect. It just seems to me that it would remove the effect that you are paying for in the memory foam.
our new mattress has a four inch memory foam topper on a standard mattress, so we get the best of both worlds. No crater yet we get the support. I love my new bed!
Hm, something for us to think about. I have the problem with my hips hurting, so I tend to toss and turn a lot, because my hip will start to hurt on one side, so I'll have to roll over until that hip hurts, etc. But we've never really had a good mattress, so that probably has a lot to do with it.
Drat, I should have taken video so you could have watched it expand for two hours.
I'm not sure "crater" is the right word. Its not like you lay down and sink in so far that someone could make the bed over you and you would not be seen. It does leave enough of a depression though that you can feel gravity fighting to keep you in that depression as you roll over.
I would guess at most, I sink in about 2" at my hips and shoulders.
After two weeks of sleeping on the mattress, I have to say that it is indeed better than what we had, but I can't say its probably the best thing ever.
The Bad:
For several days, I woke up with a little bit of stiffness in my lower back. I didn't have that from the old mattress. My wife says she has a little of that too. Mine has pretty much gone away now, I guess I'm getting used to it or adjusted to it.
My wife says that she gets a little warm during the night now. I like that part but then I'm always colder than she is.
We're both getting used to the "crater" thing. It just took a few days of learning how to move around on it the easiest.
My wife says it is harder to make the bed because the foam is heavy. Its harder to lift up the mattress while getting the sheets tucked under it at the same time.
The Good:
I can tell that I am sleeping better. I'm not waking up during the night nearly as much now. I think a little of that is that I'm more comfortable and more of that is because we don't disturb each other nearly as much. One of us can turn or move and the other doesn't feel it.
My wife says that it has certainly helped the hip pain problem she was having with whichever side she is laying on. She doesn't have that pressure right on on the hip now and she likes that.
I can say the same thing about my shoulders and arms. I was having trouble with waking up with sore shoulders on whichever side I was laying on. That has virtually gone away now.
Summary:
Overall, we both feel it is an improvement over the mattress we had before. We both think we are sleeping better. We don't, however, feel that we've now found the ultimate sleeping system. Does the "ultimate" system exist? I don't know what that would be unless it would be weightless sleeping in space.
For our situation where we needed a mattress that can lay on an old waterbed platform without a box spring, it fills the need very well. We need the under-bed drawers so we couldn't go back to a regular bed frame.
Mattress companies will not guarantee their mattresses unless they are on a box springs. The foam mattresses are meant to be on a solid platform. So, for what we needed, I can't image anything else working better. We are not so in love with it though that we won't consider going back to a GOOD conventional mattress when we are able to have a regular bed frame again.
Conclusion:
I think its a good solution for our problem and its better than what we had, but I still suspect that there is something available that would provide even better sleep.
Webs adventure finally got me to dive into the memory foam market, but not on quite such a large scale.
Today I used my MyPoints cards to buy a 4" memory foam topper for my queen size bed. Like Web's it came vacuum packed, and says it needs 24 - 72 hours to completely expand.
I know some of you thought that it would defeaqt the purpose, but i'm putting the foam on top of my mattress and a 3" feather pillow top on top of that.
Like Web's wife, my hips hurt in themorning because I lay on my side. The pillow top helped somewhat, I'm thinking the added give from the memory foam beneath that will eliminate it completely.