I bet I have bought more mattresses than you have

My wife and I have become somewhat expert on the subject of mattresses. By that I do not mean that we necessarily know much about their history or construction. I mean instead that we have slept upon a large number of different mattresses and have spent an amount of money that upsets me to think about.

Take our most recent mattress. It's quite the thing: all natural, hypoallergenic, made in Sweden by what must be highly paid folks. It carries a life time warranty - well, technically that's not true, but the warranty is long enough that it could easily exceed my life time.

I'm not going to even hint at what it cost. Let's just say that when I lie upon it, I imagine that it is lovingly stuffed with dollar bills. It may actually be - I believe cotton is one of its ingredients, are not dollar bills partially cotton?

It is a lovely mattress. It should be, considering how my hands shook when I handed over the credit card to pay for it. I could tell you that my discomfort was amply repaid by the look of joy on the salesperson's face, but in fact I did not quite feel fully compensated by that.

A long history of bedding

I don't remember where our first bed came from. Perhaps I brought it with me from my parents house - as we had very little money at the time, that seems likely. I know that it was not very long before we had even less money, because I do remember buying a new box spring and mattress rather soon after we married.

That purchase was not extravagant. We had neither the money nor the need to buy anything expensive. No doubt it was whatever mid-range set Sears had on sale at the time. We were happy with that for quite a few years.

We may have even replaced that with another mid range set before we reached the period of our lives that I remember as "mattress madness". It may not have really needed replacement, but we had a growing family, so it may have become one of the children's beds.

However, somewhere around here my wife started to develop back problems.

Back pain

This was not a surprise. She had taken a nasty tumble down a flight of stairs in her teen years, so a flare up of back pain was no great mystery. She also has a bit of scoliosis and one leg is shorter than the other, so protests from muscles and joints were perhaps expected.

Our first remedial attempts were simple: inexpensive foam mattress toppers. They didn't help and the thicker ones interfered with making the bed.

Water Bed

This being the seventies, of course we tried a water bed next.

The first thing you need to know about water beds is that they take a long time to fill. The second thing to know is that they take an even longer time to warm up to the point where any sane person would climb on top of it and that's true even if it has a built in heater. If it doesn't have a built in heater, you don't qualify as a sane person.

The third thing I know about water beds is that I could not stop thinking about what an awful mess we would have if that bed somehow leaked. Yes, I knew it had a safety liner - I put the thing together. But still, the thought of disaster would not leave my mind.

Not that my worrying was all that kept us awake. The sloshing about was anything but comfortable and we soon packed that up and gave it to a relative.

By the way: water beds don't drain quickly, either.

This passing along has been a recurrent theme, by the way. Friends, relatives and even total strangers have benefited from our mattress renewal projects. The ones they got were usually barely used and the price was what you'd expect when dealing with used mattresses: free or darn close to it.

More mattress sets

There was another standard coil mattress after the water bed. This was something a bit more up the price scale. It wasn't cough and turn white expensive, but it was at least raise your eyebrows pricey.

That was fine. I was making more money and my wife was suffering. Did I care that this bed was three or four times the cost of what we had bought in our first years together? Of course I did not. She did; she fussed about the expense and protested that we didn't need to spend that much. I shushed her and we bought the bed.

Alas, that also disappointed. Her back still ached and she would arise from a night of fitful sleep still groggy and unhappy. More foam toppers were purchased, but nothing helped.

And then, one afternoon in a mall..

The Sleep Number Bed

I was wandering about the mall by myself sometime in 1993 or 1994. I came across an open store front that had nothing but a bed on display. It was called "Select Comfort". Intrigued, I went in to learn about it.

I'm sure you've seen the TV ads enough times to understand how this works. It's an air mattress divided into two parts with individually adjustable controls to control the firmness. If I remember right, they had a deluxe model that also included some sort of plush topper.

I listened to the sales pitch and went to find my wife. I excitedly dragged her back, she tried out the bed and we ordered that deluxe model then and there. I don't remember what it cost. Honestly, I did not care.

A few weeks later the bed arrived. It had excellent assembly instructions and I had it put together and pumped up very quickly.

Unfortunately, disappointment came just as quickly. My wife could not find her magic "sleep number" (they didn't call it that then, but that's what it was). All night long she would try softer, then harder, then softer again. She was spending more time adjusting the bed than sleeping and the constant hum of the pump was keeping me awake too!

I will say this. They had a money back guarantee and they honored it quickly and efficiently. I had my money back and they had a very slightly used bed.

Latex and memory foam

We bought one more up-scale coil set after that Select Comfort failure. Then we started hearing about "memory foam". It was horribly expensive when we first caught wind of it, so we tried latex instead, reasoning that it had to be similar.

It isn't. I don't mean that a latex mattress is unsatisfactory: I slept well in it. I do not have any back problems, so I can sleep on almost anything. Latex did not help my wife. I don't remember where any of those mattresses ended up. I remember selling one very cheaply to a fellow who was out of work but really needed a new mattress for his daughter. We gave him an extra good deal.

The memory foam mattreses were starting to come down a bit. They were still a few thousand, but we felt it was worth it. Actually, we had some help from a wealthy friend on this one: she offered to buy the mattress for us. She felt we had spent enough of our own money on mattresses; she was nearing the end of her life and had more money than she had any need for. We accepted her offer and tried even harder to do nice things for her when we could.

No luck again, though. My wife thought it was good in the store, but a few nights at home showed her otherwise. I wasn't entranced with it either: I could have slept on it, but I didn't find it especially wonderful.

The memory foam mattress did have a guarantee, which the seller seemed reluctant to honor, but after some arm twisting they agreed to let us trade it for a similarly priced mattress of more ordinary construction.

We lived with that for a few years and then bought the one we are sleeping on now. The store had computer gimmickry - you lay on a bed that supposedly analyses your pressure points and decides what sort of mattress you need. Utter nonsense, I think, but we tried out several it recommended and settled on the most expensive one.

Why? Because we still had some lingering idea that my wife's discomfort could be assuaged by money.

I think the mattress is great, but I always do. My wife suffers as she always has, but we both now realize that there is no answer: we've run the gamut, we've tried everything and the fact is that no bed is going to give her a pain free night. Certainly a cheap bed might be worse, but even this replacement pile of money isn't going to provide relief.

And that's where we sit now, or rather, lie. That mattress is now five years old, but it feels no different than it did when we first flopped down on it. It may very well outlast us and if it does, it actually could be the least expensive mattress we ever bought. Actually, if it lasts another ten years, it definitely will be the least expensive overall.

It doesn't always pay to buy at the very high end, but sometimes it does work out well. I think this just might be one of those times.