we're on our third mattress in like a year and a half...I'm seriously thinking (I can't believe it) of buying the sleep number thing.  Either that or buying a case of Advil PM. 

I thought I had got over the tossing and turning and waking up thing with this last mattress but I guess the honeymoon period is over...so is any chance of returning it now.  This last week I've been waking up consistently sore and achy once again.  Today I changed the mattress around hoping for some sort of relief tonight. 

I guess I'm mattress buying challenged because I can't for the life of me figure them out. 

What I wouldn't give to get a decent night's rest these days..... 

I want to get another Simmons Beauty Rest...if you haven't tried one...well, I loved ours for 9 years...heh.  The problem is all the new fangled stuff, the layers, etc.  It's hard to find one that's juuust right.

And I don't know why, but the sales people just hover.  How are we supposed to try one out with some stranger standing over us WATCHING?

Creepy.

The second one we tried was a Simmons and it's worse than this Serta we have now.   I still have the Simmons sitting here with all the tags still on it.  It's a Simmons Beauty Rest Classic...firm and it killed by back.  Killed it.  This Serta isn't AS bad but lately the stiff back in the night and early morning has returned.  Before with the Simmons I was in pain ALL day taking Advil on the worst days usally shopping days so we had to do something.   So now I have this $600 mattress just sitting here and I'm wondering what to do with it. 

I hate mattress buying and for one of the reasons you cited here.  They hang over you and tell you to turn over and try lying on your stomach.  I usually decline.  Creepy indeed!  They're usually young guys selling these things. 

Not to dog your purchase, heh, but a $600 Simmons?  That is low end, and I bet there was no pillow/foam/anything on top?  Usually the comfortable ones start at about $1000 and go up from there.

I have a theory about our Simmons....since each coil is individually wrapped, I think they stay stiffer longer, which turns out to be a good thing because by the time the pillow top wears out, the springs are broke in.

Who knows, its just a theory.  I just want a bed that hugs me when I sleep.

That Tempurpedic bed (form foam) is HARD..its supposed to fit your body but when we tried it, that didn't happen much...

well it's complicated and I can't remember how it went... but it had to do with the first mattress which we bought on sale and returned.  The previous sale messed everything up.   They replaced it with this second Simmons and it's just the mattress not the box spring.  I think it may have been $1000 or so by the time we got thru all this; It was a real mess.   We paid extra when we got this one in the trade of the first one so I'm calling it $600 but until I look at all the paperwork between these two purchases and there was quite a bit of rigamarole that went with it I really am not sure. 

But I have NEVER ever spent $1000 for a mattress or even close to that before. 

In fact our last mattress (the one we had in Maine before all this started) and the one before that were just inexpensive innersprings and we never ever had a problem.  I think our young age helped out.   In fact the last one was a Serta we got at Sam's Club.  So that's what we did here for mattress #3; we went back to Sams.  In fact this Serta from Sam's (around $400 for just the mattress)  is better than the two we got from Simmons that cost more...go figure.  

We still have that Maine Serta mattress (and in great condition after 10 years) but it's a double and we upgraded to a Queen and put the double in the guest bedroom.  I have made visits to the guest bedroom during Mattress #1 and #2 dealings because my back hurt alot.  But now while I'm not sleeping great with mattress #3 my back is much better. 

We were told to go get one of these beds but the cost seemed prohibative to us.  So instead I did buy an expensive form foam type pad to go over our #2 mattress when we discovered after just a few days how hard it was.  So hard we started calling it "the rock."  Not a great name for a mattress.      Obviously the foam didn't work (helped some tho)  or we wouldn't be on mattress #3 now. 

Gah!!! 

hahaha....exactly....well if you find a good one...share the knowledge....until we do I'm off to buy some sort of pillowy soft thing for our current bed......

Glad to report today that I had a great sleep night last night.  I know yesterday I was a bit tired so that helped and the fact that I stayed up until 1 am helped as well.  But the bad news is I slept so good I snored very badly (actually husband's words were.."it was awful") driving him to the couch for the first time ever!  He's never done that before. 

The saga continues....

Woo HOO!

I can't imagine you snoring, you're such a tiny woman.  Surely nothing as burly as a snore actually passed your lips.  I figure you were,(like me occasinally), wrongly accused.  Deny.  Deny.  Deny.

Also, I broke down and bought a pillow top cover today until we decide on a mattress....hopefully my husband likes it. 

Americans have very very strange beds.. I noticed that the first time I visited! I love Latex matresses, they support your body perfectly and adapt to your form. And they last forever, no springs that can break. They are nice and hard as well, so no backproblems ever.

Sidenote: Isn't it a lot of hassle to make your bed if you have thousands of layers of blankets etc to arrange? And why do you tuck everything under the matress, it feels like being trapped. I love  downfeather pillowsand downfeather blankets in wintertime, and I just need one piece of each In summer we just use something like a quilt and that's it, very easy and simple and lightening quick to make.

You don't sleep on sheets?  I love 600+ Egyptian Cotton Sateen (long threads).  It is incredible to sleep on a cloud of elegant silky softness.  In the summer we use a top sheet and quilt also.  In winter a downfeather duvet and quilt.  I only tuck in my top sheet, but when we get into bed, its untucked.

I tried a foam mattress and it was too hard.  My back aches if I sleep on something that stiff. 

Now I just took mine off the bed this past weekend to see if it would help and the last three nights have been much better.  I don't know if what you have is the same as what I got.  I got the body fitting thick foam that sort of looks like the temperpedic mattress material.  I got it at Belk on a good sale and spent $100 or so.  It wasn't their highest quality but near the top.   I got it for "the rock" (#2) and it seemed to help but with this #3 mattress it's not helping me. 

I'm pretty sure this was our mattress #1 down here.  It was the worse one of the three.  This is the one that absolutely killed my back and I believe my sciatica problem started with which I'm still dealing with.

I never ever had problems before and could sleep on anything.  I think about kids and how they have no problems at all .  It's tough getting old! 

Synthetic foam and latex isn't exactly the same material,  and foam matresses can be very bad indeed. In the course of my parent's humanitarian aid for Croatia and Bosnia a lot of people donated their furniture and I picked up a lot of different sorts of matresses. Foam is very light and cheap and is often used by hospitals (some donated their beds and everything with it when they bought new ones) because they are very easy to move. Latex isn't really hard as a board though, it just doesn't give all the way away when you lie down.

The worst matresses to move were always the ones with springs and latex, springs because they are so damn heavy and unwieldy and latex because it isn't stiff and bends easily and that makes it nearly impossible to grab in a good way. Most of the time, german bedrooms don't have queen or kingsize beds but twin beds. Everyone has their own matreess in a doublebed, but you can choose what you like best here as well.