Phoenix,
First off …thank you for creating and maintaining this very informative and helpful website.
I bought a king size latex mattress in 2005/6. It was called the Earth Elements “Moon” by Nature’s Rest. That mattress was/is absolutely perfect for me and has held up amazingly well.
When my ex and I split up, I wanted a queen bed and he retained custody of that king mattress. I hadn’t followed the industry and didn’t realize that Nature’s Rest folded and has gone through a reincarnation.
Since I couldn’t just pop over to a store and buy the queen size version of the same mattress, I bought a memory foam mattress online. I hated it but it didn’t cause me aches or pains so I slept on it for a while. As I began to fully realize that this mattress had gone from a temporary measure to my nightly reality, I came to terms with the sad fact that I was sleeping in what felt like an ever dampening, mushy cocoon harboring who knows what kind of bacteria ecosystems. I acquiesced to my original feeling that this mattress was both too soft on top and hard in the core.
After lurking and researching on this site with an unnatural obsession brought on by a deep and disturbing fear that I will never experience another similarly awesome Moon mattress, I attempted mattress surgery by removing the memory foam and replacing it with a 3" soft “20 ild” (yes, I’m aware of all the shenanigans around ild measurements) Dunlop topper. Uhhhh… No. The topper itself wasn’t too bad but the combo of the bottom 2/3 of memory foam mystery mattress and the topper was not good. My back started to hurt. So then I tried a 14-19-ish Talalay topper to recreate the memory foam “feel”. Nope. Not close and still had back pain that I hadn’t experienced before the mattress surgery.
Since I couldn’t go back to the yucky memory foam and I thought that the Moon mattress cost was @$4k (it was @3k), I decided that I would try and save money by putting together my own version of the mattress. I called the retailer I bought the Moon mattress from, the new Nature’s Rest office never answers their phone and I’ve used many sleepless nights to Google to the ends of the Internet but I couldn’t find any specs to help me.
At some point I decided to surrender to a more generic latex configuration for someone like me hoping it would be at least “fine.” I sleep ok in most any upscale hotel. Haven’t had any pains (until NOW!). I’m 5’5, fluctuate between130-140lbs and curvy. I’m a mostly side (70-80%) and sometimes stomach sleeper. I opted for a “medium firm” core comprised of a 3" Dunlop layer and 3" Talalay layer. I still have the softer Dunlop and Talalay 3" layers and thought I would attempt to optimize the comfort level of my new Frankenmattress through trial and error of each and possibly both. I
Now I’m down this mad scientist path and it seems like any combination of the comfort layers on top of the 2 core layers (also tried switched around) feels great for 15 minutes. Then I get hip pain like a ache that then shoots through my leg. I’ve never had hip pain before so I’m sure I’ve misaligned my body in some way. If I just try the core layers by themselves it’s not too horrible but then my hip starts to hurt in a different way because too much pressure. I think. I don’t know. I had such high hopes.
I’m sorry this is so long. I guess my 2 most pressing questions are:
Do you happen to know or know of anyone I can ask what heavenly combination of mattress innards composed the Earth Elements Moon mattress by Natures Rest?
Assuming I continue the DIY Frankenmattress route would you suggest that I get a firmer bottom layer and a less soft top layer and try those in combination with any number of my current layers? I haven’t ever had much pain from seeping before, so I’m not sure what I’ve done wrong.
Thank you for any guidance you (or anyone else!) can provide!