Mattress Forum

My wife remembers very fondly of her grandmother's foam latex mattresses, how plush, soft and supportive they are, so naturally we decided to spend the bucks to get a latex mattress.  She is handicapped (Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis diagnosed at 11 yrs of age ... we are 65.  She has artifical hips and knees and metal supports in her neck) and whereas she needs a very soft mattress, she also needs a very supportive environment.  Her shoulders require padding, heels are irritated by firmness, and we currently place folded towels under her arms for support.  She sleeps 90% of her time on her back which may be due to her inability to turn or scoot easily.  Anyway, we purchased a 4 layer latex mattress; 2 layers are medium, then going up the stack is a soft and on top is an extra soft.  In addition, we had sewn into the top of the mattress cover an extra one inch of extra soft latex foam to give what was presumably an extra plush feel.  When we ordered it, I actually was afraid it might be TOO soft for her.

Now to the problem.  It is not only not too soft, but surprisingly does not give her the arm/shoulder support she needs, and her heels rub on the mattress and she is awakened with the back of her heels feeling almost "abraded" since her skin is very subject to any source of friction.  the latex mattress itself is quite comfortable for me, who has no particular physical needs other than a good nights sleep, so we find value in maintaining as much of the function as possible.  So we decided to look into getting a mattress topper (3 " +/-) that might give her the extra "plush" that she requires.  We have looked into a WOOL topper, but are being told that its fluff will compact after weeks or so, and would need to be rejuvenated quite frequently otherwise  my wife would find herself sleeping on pad which would be not as supportive as when we purchased it.

We looked at memory foam, but you "sleep IN" memory foam, and when she lies on it, she sinks in, and then cannot move.  She feels pretty much like a beached whale, even though she weighs less than 120 lbs.  We considered a "convoluted foam pad" of three inches of egg crate soft foam, but since most mattress pads are not returnable, I am hesitant to spend a lot of money getting more foam that is no more supportive than the 3" of extra soft that currently is on our latex bed.  Feather bed toppers are purported to not hold its fluff  and "down alternative" seems to be the "mystery meat" of toppers.

Does anyone have any experience that I can draw upon to resolve what had proven to be a very difficult situation for us?  Since latex mattresses have very little edge support, just replacing the medium layers with soft will complicate her ability to sit on the edge.  If it is too firm, she wakes up in terrible pain all night long.  We purchased an inexpensive fiber fill mattress pad just to demonstrate whether the fiber fill would take the edge off her discomfort enough to give us confidense we are going in the right direction.  YES it demonstrated that for about 2 weeks, and the fiber fill compressed and she lost all of her support

Finally, I, as a general rule, have found not retailers of mattress toppers that allow returns.  therefore the only way I know to accomplish a solution is to resolve myself to buying a topper for our king size bed for anywhere between 500 and 900 bucks, well acknowledging the fact that if it does not work, I will have to just consider it a cost of experimentation.

If anyone can opine on a direction, we would truly appreciate it.

Larry