Mattress Forum

Me:  130 lb, fused spine, chronic lower back pain, side sleeper.  Starting configuration:  F/F/XF.
Husband:  210 lb, occasional ergonomic back pain, back sleeper.  Starting configuration F/XF/XF.

Set it up on the old boxsprings because we didn't have the platform bed yet.  BIG MISTAKE.  Neither of us slept.  Covered the old base with plywood.  Better, but still much, much too soft.  Reconfigured to F/XF/F (me) and XF/F/XF (him).  Both woke up with back pain the next morning.

Removed the egg crate layer on the top.  He slept much better, but it was a complete disaster for me.  Replaced egg crate layer after moving all firmest layers as far up as possible.  XF/F/F (me), XF/XF/F (him).  Still very uncomfortable for me - XF/F/F hurts both back and shoulders, returned to F/XF/F which hurts only back.  Husband sleeping, but not happy.

Conclusion:  Mattress is obviously much much much too soft for us!  Given my back issues Dave recommended an XF VZone customized to my back problem, with the hip support firmer than his regular vzone.

New layers arrived (2 weeks in at this point).  His mattress is now XF/SF/XF and he is much, much happier.  My VZone is XF under the hips and lumbar region, but it had an M piece under the shoulders.  I swapped that with the head piece to get F under the shoulders.  I've slept much better on this and my lower back is much happier.  It still feels a little weird, as though my head is downhill from the rest of me, and I've had some neck and shoulder pain that may or may not be related to the mattress.   So I'll be moving the VZone components around for a while to see what I can make better.

We both still hate the eggcrate layer.

Update:  After a couple of weeks of moving the various pieces of the Vzone around I was close to giving up on latex.  I tried every combination that made sense and nothing seemed to help.  Until I tried one last combination that didn't make as much sense:  I took the one small piece of superfirm foam and put that under my hips.  Bingo. 

Now top layer is M under my shoulders, F under lumbar, and SF under the hips, over F and XF lower layers, and I've had no pain in 11 days.  None.  Every morning I wake up feeling fine.  It's a miracle.  There is now a pretty huge difference in firmness between the shoulders and the hips and I really did not expect that to work, but that's what my back wanted after all.  Dave is now sending me an 18" SF piece for under my hips since 10" isn't much to aim for (that's how big the SF currently under my hips is). 

My husband is still not entirely satisfied with the bed, which feels too mushy to him.  Dave is sending a new SF piece to bring him to XF/SF/SF; we'll see how that goes.  But he does sleep well and wakes up without aches and pains, which is the main thing. 

The interesting thing here is that I always expected that when I found the perfect bed I would stretch out and immediately think, "aaah, this is it!".  That didn't happen.  Still doesn't.  I have slept on mattresses in hotels that felt great upon lying down, but not upon getting up.  I have bought mattresses before that feel wonderful in the store but don't work out.  When I lie on my new bed it doesn't feel like anything special, and I think of nothing more than "ok, bedtime".  But I sleep soundly and wake up happy.  I now wonder if it's even possible to try a bed in a store, or to predict what the right mattress is, at least for me. 

My back pain comes and goes in severity, so I know better than to get my hopes up too far.  But this is the best I've felt in a long time.  I hope it lasts.

Linda