New Mattress

Have you ever had a bed/mattress just cave in on you all of a sudden? We have had 3 different mattresses (not counting the one we had for a day and sent back) in our 15 years of marriage. We started out with a waterbed (dating myself) and then the next bed was an "amazing" new bed, the Select Comfort bed.

Pardon me while I pull out my soap box for a moment... (scraping sound)


SelectComfort is just a glorified air mattress. We had one of the first beds and let me tell you, if you didn't pay attention to barometric pressure changes before, you certainly did after you started sleeping on an air mattress every night. ANYtime the pressure changed, so did the mattress. You could set it to what you thought was comfortable, but it could change in the middle of the night. We had the early one with out the famous "sleep number". I'm sure you are getting a hint of this, but I can not communicate how much I hated that Select Comfort bed. Finally one night in late January of 1998, I told King, "Last night was a very special night!" "oh really", says King, "Why?" "Well", says the Queen, "Last night was the laaaast night we are sleeping on this bed!"

(scraping sound) Ok. Soapbox put away.

We slept in the Guest bedroom for a couple of weeks until we found our current, lovely, soft, wonderful Sterns and Foster. That was 10 years ago. All of a sudden, about a month ago, we realized that the mattress has a sink hole on each side where our hips are! This is distressing. I love this mattress. It's near and dear to my heart. It's been such a faithful friend. Alas, we realized that all good things must pass on and our beloved mattress was history.

Enter the new mattress. We had toyed with the idea of a foam mattress for a few years and King has done some mighty fine research, but we weren't ready to do anything about it becaaauuuuse ... the Sterns and Foster rocks! Sadly, it turns out that his research was worthwhile. He had warned me that when the S&F died that we would upgrade to a king-size bed and probably try a foam mattress.

I was skeptical.

Most of my paralysis episodes are during the day. However! If I get too hot at night, BOOM. I'm paralyzed. This is highly inconvenient as I can hardly speak and I can not move, thus there is no way to tell anyone that I need help breathing ... especially a deep-sleeping hubby on my right. Have I said I was skeptical of the foam?? I am skeptical of the foam heating my core body temperature to such heights as to incur sudden and complete internal combustion.

King promises that the foam toppers at Target, Walmart, etc are not made to "breathe", but the foam beds ARE made to "breathe". Who ever heard of foam breathing? I thought that was something only non-inanimate objects did.

Anyway. King promises that we can send the mattress back if we don't like it. I'm still skeptical. I acquiesed to go to the mattress store and completely embarress myself by laying down on beds in full view of all of God's creation. Have you ever noticed that mattress stores are made almost entirely of glass? Why is it that everyone walking and driving by must see all the silly folks laying on mattresses? I think it's weird. I think they should make mattress stores like the nooks for the home theater spots in fancy electronic stores ... dark, velvety and quiet.

Ok, back to the mattress test. He takes me to lay down on two different foam mattresses. The first one is a "side sleeper's dream" foam mattress. The other one is for "back sleepers". I made the mistake of laying on the side sleeper mattress first.

Friends, let me just tell you that I did not care who was driving by or walking past me while I layed on my new best friend. That mattress was Valentine's Day in a box. Oh. My. Goodness. I was in love. I felt obligated to lay on the back sleeper bed and endured it for about 5 minutes and then I went back to the side sleeper mattress and caressed it so lovingly that I almost crooned to it.

The best part of my new best friend, is that (he? she? it?) it costs less than half of what they sell them for in the glassy mattress stores! I'm even more in love! I got a wonderful call today. The shipping freight company called and they are delivering my beloved new mattress on Wednesday.

I shall have to take pictures of its arrival and then croon to my new best friend...