Hi New2latex,
I would probably have given it a little longer but the most important goal is that you sleep well on a mattress without discomfort or pain and feel refreshed mentally and physically when you get up in the morning and as I mentioned actual experience always trumps “theory” when it comes to deciding if you are sleeping well on a mattress. Each person is different.
Each person has different needs and preferences in a mattress and the “needs” are always more important than the “preferences”. It’s often the case that we prefer things that aren’t “good for us” (a sweet tooth would be an example) and because we don’t notice the long term results or our choices until some period of time has passed (often years) it’s easy to believe that it’s fine for us. It’s also the case that we tend to prefer things that we are familiar with … even if they sometimes aren’t the best choice either.
In the case of a mattress … “too soft” can be like sugar where the results or “symptoms” that show up such as pain or discomfort don’t always show up in the short term and when they do show up in the longer term they are more difficult to “connect” with things that are part of a longer term pattern rather than a change that happened at the same time as some “symptoms” begin to appear.
Your body doesn’t “feel” what you feel when you are awake and in a mattress the most important “need” is good alignment in all your sleeping positions and the second “need” is good pressure relief in all your sleeping positions. Everything after this is preferences and the most important of the preferences is good temperature regulation and the ability to move and change positions easily on the mattress (both of which can affect the quality of sleep as well). There is more about “healthy sleeping” that relates to the choice of a mattress in post #4 here.
Stomach sleeping is the most risky of all the sleeping positions both in terms of spinal alignment and in terms of cervical alignment as well because you have to turn your neck sideways to sleep on your stomach. Some people that are more flexible can “get away with it” but it’s certainly not the healthiest way to sleep from the perspective of your body. If you do decide to work on changing your sleeping position away from your stomach then a body pillow can often help because it can give you some of the “comfort” or familiarity of having something against the front of your body while you are sleeping on your side.
Phoenix