My husband and I have been trying to find a comfortable mattress for ages. After reading through the advice here and trying a bunch in person we decided to splurge on a Naturepedic Halcyon Azure mattress earlier this year. Before this one we had a medium Sleep on Latex mattress.
Unfortunately, after a few months this one isn’t working for my husband either! He’s 5’8”, 160lbs and is mostly a side and stomach sleeper. With both of these mattresses, he ends up with bad lower back pain and has even resorted to sleeping on the floor with a yoga mat.
This model has 6” support coils and a 3” latex comfort layer. It’s a split queen so my side has the medium firmness and his has the most firm option (we originally tried medium firmness for him and then swapped it out). We have a platform bed with narrow slats (< 3 inches apart).
I don’t think this model allows much more customization unfortunately, but I’d love for us to be able to salvage it somehow. Our best guess is that the support layer just isn’t firm enough — would adding some kind of firmer layer in between the two layers help? (Not sure what we could physically get in the casing — something thin perhaps).
So sorry to hear you’ve been having troubles! Back pain is no fun.
If you have the firm coils and the firm latex, then you do have the firmest option available.
Since the Naturepedic Azure uses alpaca, cashmere, and wool in the comfort layer, it may feel softer, which isn’t working well for your husband.
Back pain can be caused by either too soft or too firm. To confirm that this mattress is not firm enough, look at your husband’s spine as he turns on his side. As you probably know, his spine should be straight. If it isn’t, the way it looks may give you a clue and either confirm that the mattress is too soft (if hips sink in) or too firm (hip area rising up).
Also, you mentioned putting something in the mattress. What worked for us is putting a thin piece of plywood in between the layers of our organic mattress(all latex, so a little different setup than yours). Now, that takes away from the organic nature of the mattress, but he absolutely needed the firmness. We wrap a sheet around it so it won’t snag the layers. I think it is about 1/2 inch thick. That did the trick for my husband, and the mattress still looks perfectly even to us, and it fits inside the zipper encasement. Something to try.
It is rock hard solid, and I couldn’t sleep on his side, but it works for him. We’ve had our mattress 5 years.