Once Upon a Mattress - A Tale of Woe
Written: Apr 01 '04
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Comfort: |
 |
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Durability: |
|
|
| Style: |
 |
|
|
Pros: 90 day trial period; conforms to your body pressure/heat; may be comfy for some
Cons: expensive (but see above re:guarantee); too hard a surface; not warm & fuzzy
The Bottom Line: Give it a try, unless you have fibromyalgia. If you decide to go for it, give yourself time to get used to it - it feels very different.
|
|
|
| cathyb53's Full Review: Tempur-Pedic Swedish Mattress |
For several years, I have suffered from Fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition in which (among many other things), those who have it suffer from disturbed, non-restorative sleep, as well as distinct "tender points" all over the back, shoulders, and other pressure points. So clearly, a good mattress is of absolute importance - I need a mattress that reduces pressure on all these various touchy bits and that is comfortable in the extreme. Not only do I spend a lot more time lying in my bed than most people, I spend most of my daytime hours sitting & working on my bed (chairs are very uncomfortable for me). I have a Tempurpedic pillow which I bought 8 years ago, and though it's pretty beaten down by now, I have found it very helpful when I am suffering from neck & shoulder pain.
But enough about me...When we needed a new mattress earlier this spring, my husband & I decided, after bouncing around on a lot of traditional mattresses and doing the usual consumer research, to spring for the Tempurpedic. We figured that with their 90-day satisfaction-guaranteed policy that we couldn't really lose, and we trust the locally-owned store where that carries the Tempurpedic in our area. The salesperson told us that she had one, that after 3 nights on it she was totally sold, and that of about 12 that they had sold since they started carrying them there had only been 1 return. OK. "We'll give it a try" we say, hoping strongly that this would both prove to be a magic bullet for my condition and would meet my DH's somewhat finnicky but vague (to me, anyway) comfort needs as well.
Well, here's the bottom line: alas, it was not to be. We tried so hard to make it work for us, but the monolithic Cal. King Tempurpedic has been replaced by an equally monolithic plushy-topped Stearns & Foster.
What didn't we like? Well, it just plain wasn't very comfortable. The surface of it is rather hard, almost slab-like; while everything advertised about the way it conforms to your exact body is true, it just didn't have that "ahhh, there's my sweet comfy bed" feeling. Believe me, we tried hard to work up a little love for the poor thing, but we just weren't feeling it. You can't really put a super-soft mattress pad or feather bed on top of it, which would relieve that hard slab feeling, because it depends on your body heat to do its special conforming trick. For me, the softness of surfaces is very important - I am in extreme pain when there isn't enough padding, or the right kind of padding (although you'd think I have enough of my own natural padding that no hard surface could penetrate it, but....). Now, how the Tempurpedic manages to be so squishy & conforming yet still have a hard, bench-like feeling I can't say, but we both found that to be the case.
The ads make a big point about how, because it conforms so precisely to your body, you will sleep better, without moving around so much (aka the dreaded tossing & turning). Turns out this isn't an unmixed blessing; I found that claim to be true, strictly speaking, but for folks with my condition it isn't good to stay in any one position for very long. I was left with a kind of deceptive response to it - I woke up thinking I'd had a more comfortable night, but as the day wore on it became clear that the stiffness & pain were in fact aggravated by that comfy little "nest" you make in your spot on the mattress. Because the mattress squishes down around you in a very nesty way, it was very difficult for me to get out of the "hole" - to turn over, I had to get fully awake and work quite hard (and painfully, I might add!) to get out of my little spot. If I was in a particularly weak or painful stage, I felt totally stuck down there. So that wasn't a good thing! Although we found a kind of dubious up-side to this: all my thrashing & flouncing didn't disturb my husband one bit. It is indeed true, as the ads say, that the movements of the other person in the bed don't disturb you - who knows what-all could be going on over there on the other side? (And my daughter & I tried the trick the show in the ads with the glass of wine on one side of the mattress, undisturbed by the person on the other side jumping up & down. Now there's a cheap thrill for you!)
For what it's worth: my physical therapist, who specializes in treating people with Fibromyalgia, says that none of her patients have found it to work for them either. "Too hard", they say. "Keeps you in one position too long", she says.
The other big issue: it's almost impossible to sit upright on the bed for any length of time. I do a lot of work sitting cross-legged on my bed, because that happens to be how & where I am most comfortable, and with the Tempurpedic I just kept sliding down, down, down. Like I imagine being in quicksand would be. Try as I might, put whatever pillows & cushions & braces as I could in place, the inexorable slow melt conquered all. That can't be good for anybody's back!
So back (to where? Sweden? what do they do with returned mattresses - melt 'em down?) it went. I'm pretty sure there would be people for whom this mattress would be absolutely excellent. It does live up to its claims, it just didn't work for us.
Apparently, a mattress is a kind of personal thing. The Tempurpedic certainly gives a very different feeling than a conventional mattress. I think this is just something you have to try for yourself and see. Fortunately, their 90 day trial allows for exactly that. We had no problem at all returning it, and our money (minus $150. processing fee, which didn't bother us because we had been told about it up-front) was refunded on the same day, so that all worked without a hitch. (Well, the hitch was in coordinating the removal of the Tempupedic and the delivery, from another store, of the new Stearns & Foster, but that's not strictly on-topic, so never mind about that.)
Bottom line (this time I mean it): Try it for yourself. It may not be the best thing if you have the type of condition I have. Then again, it might be exactly what you need. All I can do is tell you about my experience. Sweet dreams!
Recommended:
No
Mattress Size: California King
Mattress Firmness: Somewhat firm
Amount Paid (US$): 1677
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
cathyb53
|
 - Top 1000 |
|
Member: Cathy B.
Location: beautiful Ithaca NY
Reviews written: 133
Trusted by: 40 members
About Me:
"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now"...Bob Dylan
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.