Tuesday, September 11, 2007

oh my aching back (or...the search for the holy grail)


A bedtime story....
Once upon a time....about 6 months ago, Joe and I went on a mission to purchase a new mattress. We had a king-sized Simmons beautyrest we invested in when we first moved in together...it was a comfortable mattress that served us well over those 14 years...through the first days, years, and decade of our marriage...the conceptions and births of our four beautiful children....the up and down stages of our relationship, the jumping up and down stages of our kids....the itchy stages, the madly in love again stages....even the peeing in the bed stages (kids, not us!) One day, our 5-year-old daughter used a pair of child-sized safety scissors to cut through a gorgeous set of 800-thread count Egyptian cotton sheets and the entire top layer of our mattress. (Oh the travails of parenthood of a semi-slacker mom....she used those same "safety" scissors to lop off her younger sister's beautiful ponytailed ringlets--maybe I should start another blog.) After all that, we agreed it was time to buy a new mattress.

We researched, shopped, tested (as well as one can in a bright, fluorescent-lit mattress store showroom)....We finally found the mattress we wanted. We chose it because it was locally manufactured by real people working in a building we could really see....made from scratch; coils, springs and all, Amish-built wood frames, even...and it favorably compared to the top-of-the-line national brands. We bought the firmest, plushest, most expensive king-sized model they had. (I must admit here that it was also upholstered in a gleaming, creamy white that dazzled my eyes).

Fast forward 6 months....my husband and I are sleeping on the floor. Our children are jumping on, sleeping in (and yes, sometimes peeing) the beautiful white bed. The mattress is absolutely uncomfortable. I wake up after sleeping in it feeling like I'm 90-years-old....my husband sees the chiropractor weekly. I've tried toppers, pads, boards, pillows...nothing works....the mattress will not be tamed. Our bones are aching and our pockets are empty.

As I look forward several weeks to the bedroom phase of the deep-cure, I realize what must be done.

The quest begins anew........

4 comments:

Alana in Canada said...
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Alana in Canada said...
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Alana in Canada said...

This is my last try!

Sorry, I'll repeat that:

We've done the same thing with our mattress. It wasn't quite as exclusive a mattress as yours--but it still turns out to be an expensive, regrettable, teeth clenching mistake. We're still sleeping on ours. I like my chiropractor.

Mella DP said...

I wish there were some foolproof way to find a mattress that works for you. The ordinary way of shopping is basically the equivalent of marrying someone you've only talked to for ten minutes. The mattress set I have is ok enough with the right combination of pads and linens, but I've bought at least a dozen different pillows over the past 5 years or so trying to find something I really like, rather than just "can put up with". If mattresses were cheaper I'd probably have been through just as many of them.