I recently bought a TempurPedic pro adept medium mattress back in January. The reason for my purchase was mostly for my wife who had back pain when sleeping on the old spring mattress. She loves it by the way. After we got the mattress, it was firm as to be expected, and it did sort of soften up through time. I thought it felt fine at first, but after a while, it felt worse. I know it’s too firm for me because a couple nights, I tried sleeping on the side that my wife slept on. Given that her body weight is a lot higher than mine (not trying to be a jerk when I say that), her side was a lot softer and it felt comfortable. I was able to sleep great. However, over time, that side hardened up after a couple days, which was frustrating.
I have tried sleeping on my back, and it does help, but I find it very difficult to stay on my back as I am a side sleeper.
I have tried the suggestion of rolling around on the mattress. I have heard that keeping the room warm helps to soften the mattress. However, I have a really hard time sleeping if the room is too hot. I have also tried a couple different mattress toppers from mypillow.com. Neither helped, and in fact, they made it worse.
Right before the sleep trial was over, I kept thinking that a simple mattress topper for my side would fix the problem. I thought I would be wasting money to try to get a split mattress (one side medium and one side soft) when there would be a less expensive alternative. Well, I WAS DEAD WRONG. I didn’t know this, but apparently, the memory foam isn’t able to conform to your body when there’s a topper on it. Unfortunately, that only made sense to me once it was too late.
I’m not happy, and plus having this issue on top of insomnia makes things more difficult.
Are there any suggestions out there, or am I SOL? Is there a mattress topper out there that would actually help soften my side up? I can’t find a way to try any toppers, and I’m afraid I’ll be paying return shipping over and over until I find the right one. I could be doing this forever unfortunately. Any advice or ideas would be greatly helpful.
So sorry to hear that you are unable to get comfortable on this mattress. A split configuration would have been a great decision, and is something to keep in mind for future consideration.
For now, finding comfort on your mattress is a priority. ​
A good quality topper can be an effective way to add some additional softness. Toppers are designed to add comfort to a mattress that too firm and needs some pressure relief qualities (which yours does). When you use a topper over a mattress the topper will compress and in combination with the layers below it will take on the shape of your body profile. Softer toppers will compress more than firmer toppers. This “cradle” formed by the upper layers re-distributes weight away from the pressure points of the body.
Sometimes choosing a topper can be as difficult as choosing a mattress as it takes a bit of trial and error to dial in and find the exact combo of support/comfort best for your needs. The good news is that if you do end up making a suitable topper choice and the mattress/topper combination turns out to be a good “match” for you in terms of PPP then it also has the advantage of being able to replace just the topper without replacing the entire mattress if it softens or breaks down before the upper foam layers in the mattress (the upper layers or a sleeping system tend to soften or break down before the deeper layers) or if your needs or preferences change over time and a topper can also help extend the useful life of the mattress underneath it as well.
There is more information about choosing a topper in post #2 here and the topper guidelines it links to which along with a conversation with a reliable and knowledgeable supplier (that can provide you with good information about how their toppers compare to each other or to other toppers they are familiar with that are available on the market) can help you use your sleeping experience as a reference point and guideline to help you choose the type, thickness, and firmness for a topper that has the least possible risk and the best chance for success. It also includes a link to a list of some of the better online sources for toppers I’m aware of and a link to the online suppliers that have good exchange/return policies as well (just in case the topper you choose doesn’t turn out as well as you hoped for).
There are also some suggestions in post #2 here that may be helpful if your mattress is too firm as well.
I would suggest looking into DIY latex layers with someone like Arizona Premium and asking about their layer exchange policy so that if the layer you select isn’t right, you’re able to do a little trouble shooting.
Wow! Thank you for the reply. Great wealth of information. Glad to know there are options out there for my specific situation. I’ll definitely read through these and do my research.
I’m considering a latex, but I will need to try them out in the store. It would be nice to be able to try a topper on a bed similar to mine to see what it would feel like.
Also, I should mention that I do like to sleep in a cooler room. For this reason, the mattress firms up with colder temperatures. Could it potentially be a problem if the mattress get firm since I wouldn’t be laying on it directly and then the topper wouldn’t be able to sink in very well and feel super hard?
Memory foam is a fairly unique bedding material because it changes deflection characteristics based on not just pressure but also temperature. So as you mentioned adding additional “insulative” foam layers above the memory foam will cause it to firm up even more than before but this will only affect the memory foam comfort layers (usually only around 2-3" thick at most) and not the poly foam support layers further down. That said really the only way to really test if it works is to try it on your particular mattress. Unfortunately, if that doesn’t work I don’t think any sort of mattress surgery would be a good idea either since Tempurpedic likes to glue all the layers together, making it very difficult to remove the memory foam (you be much better off just selling the mattress and building/buying something else).
So, I ended out getting a 3" soft talalay latex topper from sleepez.com. I did as much research as I could before making this purchase. It felt comfortable to lay on, however, I was waking up with back pain in the mornings. This was because it was actually too soft this time. I ended out returning and got a 2" soft talalay latex topper. I felt like it was an improvement, but still too soft. I didn’t want to go medium because I felt that it would feel too firm since the tempur pedic medium was too firm.
This is my 4th topper I’ve tried. Is there a way to get this thing cut in half to reduce the thickness to 1". I talked to the folks at sleepez, and they didn’t have an answer, which I shouldn’t be surprised since a lot of this stuff is cut and shipped overseas (not sure about sleepez specifically).
Maybe this is a long shot, but does anyone know of any kind of machinery that can cut this to 1"? It would be nice if I could find somewhere that has this and would be willing to cut it for me, even for a fee. Maybe I would have to ship it somewhere?
It would seem crazy to me that there wouldn’t be some way to cut this down to 1" somehow.
