First, thank you so much for making this forum available. It, and the accompanying articles and miscellany, has been so helpful in this process. If only I had known about it 4 years ago when we made our big mattress mistake! But we will correct that now, with your help.
My husband and I are in search of a new mattress. Here are our specs: he’s 5’8, 155 lbs; I’m 5’5, 125 lbs, but currently pregnant. He’s a stomach sleeper, but insists that he can sleep on anything anywhere and that we shouldn’t make any decisions based on him. That said, he prefers to air on the side of firmer rather than softer. I am a combo side/back sleeper (though I’m almost completely on my side these days while pregnant, but plan to get back to my combo sleeping ways as soon as I can). We have a king Simmons Beautyrest with a pillow top (not sure which one, but the layers are listed on the tag if that would be of any use), which we got in 2009. Very quickly, we started getting valleys with a large hump in the middle. Over time, I started having lower back pain, hip pain, and terrible shoulder pain. Since I’ve been pregnant, I decided I can’t take it anymore, so we moved into the guest room, where we both have our own twin Simmons Beautyrest World Class with Florence Pillow Top mattresses. I find this bed to be very firm, moreso that I like. Obviously, this is not a good long term option for us, so we are searching for something new.
We have been to a couple of big box mattress stores locally and tried out a few different options. We started with the Tempurpedic Cloud Luxe. We both found this to be way too soft for our tastes. Of the Tempurpedic line, we found the Rhapsody to be closer to what we can both agree on. But, we don’t like the price tag of Tempurpedics and I felt a little like I was sinking in quicksand on their beds. We also tried the iComfort series from Serta and really liked these. At the first store, we liked the Prodigy, but when we went to another store and tried it again (2 weeks later), we found it to be a little soft and preferred the Insight. I also liked the texture of the top better than the Tempurpedic, but I don’t know how much this matters when you have bedding on top. Reading reviews of the iComfort does not inspire confidence in this line. Too many stories of permanent indentations and loss of support. We also went searching for Latex mattresses to try and only found some options locally at Macy’s, and I don’t think they even had much Latex in them. We tried a Serta (not exactly sure the name, but Macy’s website seems to only list one Latex option from them called Serta Perfect Sleeper Elite Mattress Sets, Stone Creek Ultra Firm Tight Top) and a Sternes and Foster. The Serta was ok, but I didn’t feel like it supported my lower back like the iComfort ones did and the Sternes and Foster was terrible (felt like a traditional innerspring and very firm). Both definitely gave me more of a feeling that I was sleeping on top of the mattress rather than in it, like the memory foam feel.
Lastly, I sleep hot. I know that doesn’t go well with memory foam, so it’s definitely a consideration.
We have seriously been considering the Ultimate Dreams/Dreamfoam options, but we’re not sure what to do. It sounds like their memory foam option is much softer than we’d like (compares to the Cloud Luxe, right?). Chuck told us that they are getting ready to debut a new version that is closer to the Rhapsody. Do you know anything about this? Or would you recommend latex for us? Or should we look into another brand? Thanks again for all your help.
