So........... this entire post is going to make me sound ridiculous. In Australia, as an adult, I had one mattress for 3 years and another mattress for 15 years, but totally fine, barely any thoughts given to the subject.
In the 6 months we've been in America, we have purchased 5 mattresses. 5! I don't know what the hell is wrong with me, but basically I've been waking up really, really hot, to be the point of being quite nauseous. Very similar to the couple of times in Australia I'd accidentally fallen asleep with an electric blanket on and woke up in the middle of the night dying of heat. I've always been a hot guy, especially compared to my partner, who uses me as her hot water bottle.
It took me a long time to figure out it all might be mattress related. Moving from Australia is a big move, we sold pretty much everything, so I wasn't sure if I was feeling crappy because of the diet change, stress, different hemisphere, different altitude, the weather, who knows. I've never really been allergic to anything, so I didn't understand why I was feeling so crappy.
It took me so long to realise, that on our first mattress, we missed the 110 day money back guarantee thing... it took me like 116 days to figure out I might be having mattress issues.
In the interest in being super entertaining and breaking fascinating up to the minute news, I will now discuss each mattress in turn. Take that CNN.
HJELLESTAD mattress from Ikea
Like lunatics, we were bouncing around the Ikea store lying all over everything and we liked this one the best.... and this guy was nothing but trouble. Ikea delivered everything but that mattress (they forgot it) and then it took weeks and weeks and a trillion phone calls to get it... I had stupidly signed the delivery docket at the time of the initial delivery (they had delivered an entire apartment's worth of stuff) so they had no pressing bureaucratic reason to come right back. Ikea is amazing, and totally works... except when it doesn't and then it really doesn't. You can't call the store at all. You can only call the call centre, that can't actually do anything. It was a crazy frustrating time for endless pointless phonecalls.
In the interim, we were sleeping on this crazy ugly
futon couch guy:
Two people do not really fit.
Anywho, eventually the mattress came and I didn't realise for ages that I was feeling sick each morning. I'm a morning person, it's when I'm most excited and most productive, so it was super weird... and I seriously thought it the secret sugar America puts in everything.
Once I figured that it could be the HJELLESTAD mattress, it was past the 110 day thing and Ikea's hands were completely tied. So, it was standing up in our bedroom for weeks and weeks until I just broke and called a recycling company to take it away. The whole thing was an expensive exercise.
In the meantime, we were enjoying our new:
CASPER KING SIZE - MATTRESS OF THE CENTURY
The whole thing was super painless, especially after the rabbit hole of insanity Ikea put us through, and the unboxing was as impressive as everyone says. It comes in this box shaped like a mini-fridge, and then unfolds and blows up right before your eyes.
It was a great mattress, my partner super loved it, but I was still waking up too hot. Not nearly as bad as the Ikea one, but not nearly as good as mattress back in Melbourne, Australia.
Eventually we had to say goodbye and ask Casper for a refund which they were gracious and lovely about. Also, calling their phone number, not waiting literally 40 minutes on hold like Ikea, and speaking to someone super cheerful who has all the necessary powers was such a joy. With Customer Service like Ikea's prevalent in this world, Casper is going to make a million, trillion dollars. I couldn't recommend them enough. They organised the recycling collector guys too. The whole thing was amazing and I was sad it didn't work out for us.
Next we tried a brilliant store in Portland called
Parklane Mattresses.
These guys make it all from sustainable materials, recycle where possible and use two trucks. One to bring your new mattress and one to haul away your old one... ensuring that no bed bugs or anything nasty could ever contaminate your new mattress. So smart.
Again we lied around on everything in the store like lazy lunatics and chose the
Pettygrove:
All the mattresses were named after streets, so we were secretly bummed that we didn't love the mattress named after the street we're on, but this guy was so super comfortable. Unfortunately I didn't last 4 hours on it without waking up feeling just so sick. My skin felt spiky and it took me half a day to feel right again. My partner slept completely fine. She loved that mattress so hard.
I tried the next few nights, but one night I barely last 40 minutes without feeling way too super hot and moving to the couch. It was a tough week, by Friday I was totally delirious from exhaustion. It was actually my birthday and my lovely partner had organised a night away at a cool log cabin in the mountains. Instead of doing a nice dinner and roasting smores by the camp fire (which we have never done and were super pumped about) I went to bed at 8:30pm, completely passed out and woke up feeling amazing the next day (but still somewhat drained, but amazing/drained). The log cabin just had some crappy old mattress, but seriously nothing ever felt so good to me ever.
Obviously our home mattress wasn't going to fly, so
Parklane were again super super awesome and let us change it over with just a small admin feel to pay their drivers. I'm thinking at this point that maybe I had an allergy to something, so the next mattress we tried had no latex, also known as the
Westover:
This guy uses a soy cushion top as opposed to a latex cushion top thing, and while my partner found it slightly less comfortable than the Pettygrove, I still barely lasted the night. I woke up at 4:30am and just felt so gross... so I got up and started my day. Super great for productivity, terrible for tiredness. I tried this one a few nights, each with the same result. At this point my partner is pretty sure it's all in my head. Awesome.
Working on this point that it is an allergy thing, I ordered
this guy from Amazon:
It encases the entire mattress so anything you're allergic to is trapped and can't get to you. It didn't make any difference to me, I still got superhot, and life still sucked quite a bit.
Parklane have been really nice, and allowed me to get a refund even though I've now cost them two mattresses. They are a great company and I couldn't recommend them highly enough.
Since mega multinational corporation didn't work, neither did internet sensation, neither has cool indie earth-friendly shop, I decided to go super mainstream and go to
SleepTrain, where we picked this
guy:
It kinda hurt my heart to be in here. Everything seemed super mass produced and kinda awful, but I'm strugglin' here. It got delivered today, but apparently is has ventilation strips down the side.
On all of these mattresses, I'd be crazy hot on any part of me that was touching the mattress, and then the rest of me was like the air temperature... so sleeping with a doona was insanity sometimes, but other times I'd be so hot on my stomach, but my back would be so cold... the whole thing has been super weird.
Fingers crossed tonight is the night of good sleepiness. I'm excited and super nervous. I'm not sure my partner can take another disappointment. I'll just be keen to sleep in a big boy bed.
Update : 25th of May.
No good. My partner feels like she's sleeping on a table, and I still got way too hot and have felt sick and headachey all day. We're going to put the Mattress Encasement and mattress protector on to see if that makes a difference.... or we're just gonna sleep on an inflatable mattress. Either way, happy happy times. I'm almost considering doing a few AirBnB around town, finding a mattress that works and then just buying that one.
