The Princess and the Pea

You know what my favorite is?  My bed.  It's my happy place.  I love to sleep.  J and I hang out in bed.  As soon as the kids are in bed, J and I are in bed.  We'll watch TV, play on our phones, have a beer, eat dessert.

No, seriously.

So it was really a bummer when my back started bothering me.  I tossed and turned all night, woke up a little hunched over, and started to feel not so great about my bed.

I remember buying our mattress.  We really had to scrimp and save to afford it.  We chose a Stearns & Foster, which of course was the most expensive mattress in the store.  But it was soft and cushy and pillow-toppy and felt like laying on a cloud.  I was a new mom at the time, and I needed a comfy place to nurse and cuddle my boy, and crash when the exhaustion took over.

Back then, I was young and spry, and cushy was my jam.  Fast forward seven years, and I'm old and withered.  I needed a firmer mattress.  (Not to mention one that didn't have a giant mountain in the middle.  It was obvious that the newlywed phase had ended by the trenches on opposite sides of the bed where J and I slept.)

If you know anything about J, you know that he will most certainly never run out and buy anything on an impulse.  When we decided to replace the mattress, the research began.  We knew we would NOT be buying a Stearns & Foster, and were intrigued by the "Bed in a Box" movement.  We researched...and researched...and researched.  Every time I came up with a short list, J came up with a different one.

BUT...we FINALLY agreed on a mattress, and ordered a Leesa.  One day it was delivered in the mail, we unboxed it,  and watched it inflate.  Weird.

But man, was I happy to get rid of the trenches.  The memory foam was an instant improvement over my old innerspring piece of crap.  I felt good.

For awhile.

Then my back started bothering me again.  In hindsight, I think it probably wasn't great the entire time, but it wasn't as bad as our previous mattress, so I didn't immediately notice.  The best thing about these internet delivery mattresses is that they all offer a trial.  Whoever heard of such a thing??  Sleep on a mattress for 100 NIGHTS, and if you don't like it, they'll refund your money.  Just like that.

So that's what we did.

And then, more research, of course.

J found another internet foam mattress.  This one had three levels of firmness.  You could flip different layers around, each side independent of the other (!), to suit your needs.  This is great for us, because J really prefers a softer mattress than I do.  We slept on it for awhile, and I thought all was going well.  Until one day I realized that it wasn't.

I woke up one morning and decided that I was over it.  I asked J when our trial period ended...

He looked up the date, and answered...YESTERDAY.

SHIT.

So I suffered through it.  I sent J to Home Depot to get a big ole' sheet of plywood to put in between the foam layers.  Again, it bought me some time, but in the end, this mattress just wasn't going to cut it.  No more foam mattresses.

More research.

We found the one traditional mattress store that also allowed sleep trials.  After all, if my experience had taught us anything, it's that I clearly needed some time to determine if a mattress was going to work for me, and the price of a mattress was one expensive gamble.

Sidenote: we also looked at Sleep Number.  HOLY SHITBALLS.  To get the features that we wanted, it was going to cost us $10,000.  I am not even kidding.  TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS.

But I digress.

We walked into the store, told the salesman that we wanted a firm mattress, inner spring, no pillow top, no foam, no muss, no fuss.  He showed us the one mattress that fit the bill, and threw in an adjustable base because it was some holiday sale.  (Seriously, this saga has been ongoing for long enough that I don't even remember what the holiday was.)

Another side note: how old am I that I was ridiculously excited about an adjustable base?  Remember those commercials for the Craftmatic Adjustable Bed?  With the oldsters laying in their beds, heads and feet elevated?  Reading their oldster books with big smiles on their faces?  I am one of them now!

How much do you want this oldster bed?

We received our firm, innerspring, no muss no fuss mattress.  It was a little bit like sleeping on a bed of stone firmer than it had felt in the store.  What would one do in this position?  You can't trade in a mattress for at least 30 nights.  And we can't really be looking at trading in ANOTHER mattress anyway, right?

So we added foam.  If you're doing the facepalm thing right now, you'd be right on.

The foam helped.  The bed was firm, but not unbearable.  I didn't exactly have back pain each morning, but there sure was some stiffness when I got out bed.  Apparently, I am a delicate flower.   

During our 30 night trial, we did some traveling.  J noticed that after sleeping in a couple of different hotel beds, I woke up feeling great.  I joked that this was probably because I was ultra relaxed since I was traveling without my children, but he had a point.  I checked out the tags on the hotel mattress to see what it was that I had been sleeping so blissfully on, and the research commenced.

And then we went back to the mattress store.

I only wish this were a big joke.

We traded in one more time, for the medium-firm version of the most recent mattress.     

I am happy to report that at press time, my back feels great.  I am sleeping super great, I am happy to be feeling happy in my happy place once again.

Now if only I could find the perfect pillow...