Hi kate,
I think that you had already tried this previously. I would keep in mind that the upper layers of a mattress are supposed to “allow” your hips or other pressure points to sink in to provide better pressure relief and secondary support that can fill in the gaps in your sleeping profile. The deeper layers are the ones that are supposed to “stop” your hips from sinking in too far (not the top layers). If you have only 2" of soft latex on top of the mattress then the firm polyfoam layer may not be “allowing” your hips to sink in enough to provide suitable pressure relief and secondary support.
Lower back pain usually indicates that the upper layers are too thick and/or soft (although with your body type this would be somewhat unusual). It’s also possible that the 30 ILD is too firm for you and isn’t “allowing” your hips to sink in enough (similar to having just the 20 ILD on top of your firm polyfoam) although this is less likely.
[quote]I was pretty well set on returning the 2" soft and sticking with the medium as that seems to best address my primary concern - lower back pain. (I can only return one). It also seems a better place to “build from”. I was also pretty set on ordering a 1" (24-28ild dunlop (from foamorder) for a comfort layer to give me some of the missing comfort/softness, but also keep it firm enough to keep my hips up.
Maybe I should just sleep for a bit on the 30ild over the base to see how it goes and then take it from there, but I was just wondering if my thinking is right on this one…[/quote]
I haven’t seen any feedback from you related to sleeping on just the 2" 30 ILD Dunlop layer on top of your polyfoam base so I really don’t have a frame of reference about how it compares to the other combinations you’ve tried but this seems like a reasonable plan. Once you’ve spent some time sleeping on just the 30 ILD topper on your polyfoam base then you would be able to use your sleeping experience as a reference point to help you decide whether you need any additional softness, pressure relief, and secondary support and how any “symptoms” you experience compare to the other combinations you’ve tried and help you decide on the thickness and firmness of any additional layers that would have the best chance of success.
Since you’ve already tried the 30 ILD and 20 ILD combination and based on your “symptoms” it seems like it could be too soft for you it would probably make more sense to keep just the 30 ILD for now and then perhaps add a layer on top of it that is thinner than the 2" 20 ILD layer that you’ve tried if you need additional softness.
It may also be worthwhile experimenting with the convoluted toppers you have on top of the 30 ILD (but only after you’ve slept on the 30 ILD by itself for long enough to identify any consistent patterns in your experience).
This is what I call a “bottom up” approach (see post #2 here) and allows you to use your experience on each “firmer” combination to help you decide on how much additional softness to add to it using smaller incremental steps until you have the “best possible” combination.
Phoenix