Mattress Forum

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(Note added in Jan. 2012: The topper-search saga turned into a mattress-surgery saga. Mattress surgery details are farther down in the thread.)

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I'm looking for opinions on the next way to tweak my toppers. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Here's the current setup:
Two-year-old 9" high old-fashioned, two-sided (flippable), firm innerspring mattress (full size), on a wooden [correction: wood and steel] foundation; both still in very good shape.
On top of the mattress: 2" 32 ILD Talatech latex topper from SleepLikeABear.
On top of that: 1" Talatech latex topper, 24 ILD.
The 3" of latex are enclosed in a heavy-ish cotton/poly cover from FBM.

Stats: 50-year-old woman, about 5'6", 120-125 pounds; side and back sleeper, but mostly side. A little joint pain in the hips now and then, but no serious illnesses or injuries to work around (knock on wood).

(The 2" 32ILD topper is a new purchase. I read some old forum threads that I'd saved on my PC; waffled between 32ILD and 28ILD; thought about getting an inch of each; but that was more expensive, and I was most worried about getting something that would turn out to be too soft, like my previous attempts, so I went with the 32ILD.)

So:

With just those 3" of latex, I think my hips & back are OK, but my shoulders still get too crunched and I wake up with some arm numbness.

When I add my 1"-thick polyfill fiberbed on top of the latex, my shoulders are good, but my hips sink down a little too far -- because this fiberbed is several years old and has flattened in just the hip area -- so I wake up with some low back pain. (The rest of the fiberbed is still in great shape.)

One option: I thought about getting a 1" 20ILD layer from FoamByMail and adding it on top of the 3" of latex I already have. Recent posts seem to imply that FBM's quality has gotten better and more reliable than when I was here on the forums 2 years ago.  But: Since I pretty much bottom out on the 24ILD layer, I'm skeptical that a 20ILD layer would help or would balance things out.

(If I put the 1" 24ILD layer on the floor, my bony hips & shoulders go right down to the floor. If I fold that topper in half and lie on that, I still go right down to the floor. That makes me wonder about all the posts I see about 19ILD and even 14ILD layers -- I can't quite fathom how those would be useful, so I'm curious about that.)

Another option: Get scrap foam and add some just in the hip area, under the part of the fiberbed that has flattened. SLAB sells some scrap latex of various sizes and ILDs. Maybe something like a 28ILD scrap under the hips would work?

Another option: A 1" 28ILD layer (or equivalent in 100% natural latex) between the 24 and the 32?

I'd like to avoid memory foam for now, because of the off-gassing issue, but won't completely rule it out.

Thoughts? Other ideas?

Thanks!
-- Catherine

Edited to add:
In case it's useful, here's what I've tried before:

1) A thing called "Oodles" that had latex "noodles" in it -- great idea but poor execution. It would have been terrific if it had had at least twice as many baffles in it to prevent the noodles from shifting around within each baffled section. I half-heartedly attempted to hand-sew in more baffles but didn't know what I was doing and the thing is big & awkward, so that didn't work. (I used it on top of the 24ILD topper.)

2) Below the 1" 24ILD topper -- a 2" Dunlop latex topper from Overstock.com, unknown ILD & manufacturer. Wonderful for a while... but then it cratered in the hip area. Did not think latex was supposed to do that, but it did. [Edited to add: this was medium-firm synthetic, or mostly synthetic, Dunlop. Natural stuff would hold up much better, I'm sure.]