We paid a visit to Holy Lamb Organics last week. What a wonderful little workshop!
I purchased a Happy Sheep Topper and 3 wool pillows. I am a side sleeper and here’s what I noticed:
First night: Arms kept falling asleep.
After second night: moderate jaw pain on right side. (Didn’t even occur to me that it could be from the pillows, but my husband suggested that I switch back to my old pillow & pain has eased up considerably.)
I have emailed the company for input. But I bet many of you have vast pillow experience! Any suggestions?
These were on clearance, but still came to about $300, so I will be sad to give them away (they are not returnable.)
While wool can be a great material for pillows or toppers and many people love them, like all materials it’s important to make sure that it’s suitable for your specific needs and preferences. Wool can be firmer than some people prefer as the wool compresses so it sounds like the pillow and/or topper may be firmer than you tend to do best with or the pillow may not be the most suitable thickness for you (the height of a pillow can affect shoulder pressure and circulation in your arm).
I would probably try one or the other separately for a few days each to see if either of them work well for you without the other one (and to give you some time to get used to them as well) or whether both of them aren’t a good match for you and of course I would talk with them as well to see if they have any suggestions that may be helpful.
I don’t love the pillows because they do become firm fast. I found if I beat them senseless to puff up, rolled them vigorously, and made sure to feel around for large lumps and break them up, on a nightly basis I could keep them feeling the way I wanted them to… And when they feel nice I like. However, it was a lot of work so I only use them sometimes now. Mostly when I want a firmer feel pillow.
if I had to buy wool pillows again, I’d get ones with batting and not pearls or similar. The pearls make inconsistent lumps as they compress together, which makes for large, uneven, inconsistent, random lumps and hard spots in the pillow. I’d rather the pillow either be uniformly hard or uniformly soft than have lumps… For the same reason I dislike shredded latex pillows.
My wife found with the wool with the pearls that since they were adjustable (you could remove wool) that if she removed quite a bit then they stayed more consistent and didn’t develop as many lumps. Unfortunately, that’s hard for a side sleeper cause then they’re not tall enough.
The wool topper I use when I want to soften and firm up all at the same time, or to deaden or mute the feel of what’s underneath. So like if you find talalay too ‘lively’, but find dunlop doesn’t let you sink deep enough in, then wool over soft talalay deadens the talalay liveliness while still letting you get extra contouring that talalay offers vs dunlop.
Wool does compress and as Phoenix said is remarkably firm once compressed. Easy enough to uncompress for the most part, but work that you need to do. Wool over a soft talalay I found to have a remarkably nice feeling in experimenting, but that’s just my opinion on something I discovered.
