Waking up is often terrible for me. I’m not sure why our mattress is doing this to me, but I occasionally wake up with really crisp back pain, and headaches that last all day.
I’m sure that whatever causes these things is something that happens while I’m sleeping. Whether the headaches are related to the mattress I can’t say for sure, but I know that the back pain is.
Recently, Berta and I went shopping for a new mattress. Partially because of these issues, and partially because of our house planning. Our new bedroom is much too small for our Queen-sized bed (yeah, but if you saw it, you’d think it was a twin compared to the room size), and we needed a guest bed anyway. To this end, we visited the Sleep Number store in the Exton Mall and chose some beds that we could blow up.
There are a variety of bed models, and what you choose dictates the lengths to which they will attempt to deliver comfort. For example, the model 3000 doesn’t come with anything but the basic mattress. There is no fluffy cover, there is no squishy foam stuff, there is no base padding - it has none of this extra technical stuff. The model 9000 has it all - temperfoam topper, squishy padding, dual-chambered reversable pads, bottom padding, you name it.
We settled on a model 7000, which has a nice foam top and bottom padding, but it’s one big piece of foam, unlike the 9000’s separate left/right chambers for a dual-sided foam/temper-material. The model 7000 also has a remote for the pump.
These Sleep Number beds, if you’re not familiar, are filled with air. There is basically an inflatable raft inside the bed that is surrounded by firm foam that gives the mattress sides rigidity. The inflatable part has chambers that help equalize support, and a nozzle that hooks to a pump via some plastic tubing. The “Sleep Number” refers to the level of air pressure used to provide support in the mattress. According to the testing at the store (in which you lay down on a bed with sensors that detect heat disbursement) I’m a 35 and Berta is a 30.
The beds are completely user-assembled, or you can pay someone to do it for you. They ship the beds to your house via UPS in a set of several boxes, the number of which depends on how big the bed is, what model it is, and what accessories you choose.
For example, we also got a couple of mattresses for the kids (tempted by the sales guy with the magic words “they will sleep later on the weekends” and a good sale price) that are just model 3000, the whole of which came in a single box per mattress.
The mattresses arrived yesterday, and after dinner we assembled two of the three mattresses.
We put together Abby’s first, and there was some confusion over the construction. The boxes we received included a solid plastic platform on which the bed was to sit. There were two twin-sized platforms, and although we didn’t specifically remember ordering platforms for the kids’ beds (since they already have twin-sized frames) we figured that’s what they were for. We were a bit unhappy when the platform didn’t fit inside the frame, but it turns out we were just being stupid.
Our bed, the king-sized, uses two twin frames as a base. Since we couldn’t use our existing queen frame, we needed all of the new twin-frame parts (which came in three separate boxes) for the king-sized bed. Our confusion was abated, but we became less enthusiastic about assembling the second twin frame after the first one, which was rough work. We had to use a rubber mallet to pound in the slats.
Assembing the bed itself wasn’t so bad. You put the mattress “wrapper” on the frame or platform where you’re building it, and unzip the top to remove it. Put the pastic corner pieces into the corners. Insert the ends of the long, firm, foam side-pieces into the corners to create a solid-ish frame inside the wrapper. Unroll the inflatable part into the middle with the hose ports near the opening in the mattress bottom. Connect the pump’s hoses to the ports and plug it in, then pump up the mattress until it’s mattress-like. Zip the top back on to finish up.
Our king size bed required a bit more preparation, since we needed to assemble the base first, including twelve separate feet, which we had the impression would be wood, but weren’t even wood-looking plastic. Then there was a foam pad that went under the two separate inflation areas, and after the top was zipped back on, we had to stuff a thick foam layer into another zippered compartment on the top of the mattress.
In all it wasn’t bad, but the parts were heavy, and by the time we finished assembling the two beds, we were ready to put them to use.
Of course, Abby, who has been sleeping in a separate bed in Riley’s room since we moved in, poked her head into our room after we had tucked her in, saying, “I’m not really comfortable on my bed.” Of course, she wanted to sleep on the new mattress which was in her room. And so Berta moved her. And then, as expected, Riley complained that Abby wasn’t in the room with him, and so he moved into her bed, too.
Berta pulled out the old mattress from under Abby’s new one and made it available in case he fell off (read: “in case Abby pushed him off in her sleep”). And, as expected once again, we heard several cries of, “Abby, move over,” in the middle of the night, then crying. And so the sleeping arrangement I originally envisioned when I saw the boxes in the garage was realized - Abby in her new bed, and Berta, Riley, and me in our new bed.
In spite of the extra occupant in the bed, I woke up this morning feeling a bit different than usual. Not the usual sore/stiffness that I usually have, but just a strange awkward feeling that I think might be what morning is really supposed to feel like when you get out of bed. How pleasant.
