Mattress Forum

My wife and I went to the local Sleepys to try out the mattresses and start the ball rolling on buying a new one. Long story short, I literally laid down on every level of spring mattress they had to offer, and every single one made my lower back hurt in no more than two minutes. The Dormia pillow-top bed was close, but even that had my lower back getting sore after about five minutes or so; the standard Dormia was out in under a minute. The only bed I was comfortable on for a long period, both on my back and on my side, was the TempurPedic Celebrity Bed. The Rhapsody Bed was a close second; perfectly fine on my back, but it was uncomfortable to lay on my side as I started to feel it in my hip and shoulder. Of course, the Celebrity Bed is the most expensive bed in the store. :-\

So I'm pretty much ready to go for the Celebrity Bed, but I'm wondering if I should give a spring mattress a try with the topper that I have. The topper certainly helped when I first got it, and it may be that using it with a new mattress will work as well or better than it did with a then 10-year old model. That would save a boatload of money, and I could even pay in full up front rather than financing it (although the current 0% financing offer certainly makes things easier); but I'm wondering if it will pan out in the long run. I'm guessing that the mattress being on a solid platform, rather than a boxspring, might be contributing to the problem (although all the mattresses in the store were on box springs and still killed me). Sleepys does offer a 30-day return for credit option, so I could try some other spring mattress with the topper, and if I'm still hurting after a month I could exchange it for the Celebrity Bed. But I'm so sick of waking up sore / in pain every morning that I really want to just get something that works from Day One.

My lower back pain is due in part to having tilted hips, so that my spine is never really straight in that area. It just seems sensitive to pressure points pushing on it from the mattress, and the fact that I couldn't stand lying on my back for more than a couple of minutes, even on a pillow-top mattress, makes me think that I'm one of those people who basically has to go with tempur foam. But my wife and I are trying to avoid spending more than necessary if we can (whether up front or over a 3-year financing term). I've looked at knock-off foam mattresses like Select Foam and Angel Beds, but I've seen lots of negative reviews of the latter, and the Select Foam web site just doesn't give a "professional" feeling or leave me feeling comfortable with the merchant (there are LOTS of typos all over the site [they can't bother with spell check or a copy editor?], they don't really detail the mattress construction the way TempurPedic does, and so on). I'm really hesitant to put my money on the line with one of those knock-offs.

Can the folks here with lower back issues chime in with how they've gotten back to restful sleep? I've read through several pages of the postings here, including the "mattress surgery" thread. But I'm trying to keep things simple, and I'm hoping that I can get a general "go with this route" consensus.

Thanks in advance! It took a while to find this site, but I'm glad it's here and that there's such an active community! :-)

- Joe -