How to Choose a Mattress (and How to Learn from Our Mattress Mistakes!)

This post brought to you by Serta. The content and opinions expressed below are that of Stuff Parents Need.

Can we have a little chat about how very tired you are, friend? So many of you out there are exhausted. Maybe you have a baby in the house, so you never get through a REM cycle before your sleep is interrupted. Or maybe you are like me and have children who wake up at ridiculously early hours (I’m at the beach right now…the one place where kids surely wear themselves out and sleep in, right? Mine got up at 4:45 am this morning…). Or maybe you have a lot of stress at your job which makes it harder to get to sleep and stay sleeping.

And in any of these scenarios, you may also be sleeping on an old, uncomfortable mattress. I’d love to share our mattress journey with you so that you can learn from some of our mistakes and so that you can think for yourself about if your mattress might be playing more of a role than you realize in your discomfort level.

For 10 years, Tim and I slept on a high-end mattress that was as plush as humanly possible. At first, it definitely seemed like a dream…like literally sleeping on clouds! But as time went on, we discovered that neither one of us really liked the ultra plush mattresses the best. It was actually starting to cause us back and neck problem. And by year 5 with the mattress, we were experiencing some serious sagging. We would both roll toward the middle during the night. Maybe that sounds romantic? IT IS NOT. The edges of our bed were so much higher than the middle part that they were pretty much unable to be used for sleeping, which mean we effectively had a smaller mattress than what we wanted. It was rough, y’all.

We had been told by the slick salesman that our mattress would last us at least 20 years. LIES, PEOPLE!!!!  Please do not assume that your mattress will defy the odds and last multiple decades. And really, if you think about it, you spend roughly 1/3 of your life on your mattress, so even for it to last 10 years is quite a feat! All I’m saying is not to put yourself in a situation where you can’t replace your mattress when it is honestly time to because of what a salesperson told you. We held on to our fancy pants mattress about 3 years longer than we had any right to simply because we thought it couldn’t possibly be time to replace it, and all the while our sleep quality was deteriorating more and more.

Finally we were ready to replace the mattress, and I’ve got a little video diary Tim and I filmed for you to tell you about what we picked and what mistakes we made with our second mattress (because yes, we still messed up…). 

We’ve had our memory foam for just over a year now, and we are already disappointed. We clearly got exactly what we paid for, and now it’s time to pick out a mattress the proper way.

Getting It Right (Finally!)

A few days ago I finally did what I should have done way back when and went with a reputable mattress company, Serta. I physically went to a location where a knowledgeable rep could assist me and explain to me the difference between all of the mattress and where I could try out many different models for myself to find the perfect fit.  This is where we discovered the Perfect Sleeper  by Serta®, which is the only official mattress of the National Sleep Foundation. It holds such a prestigious distinction because this particular mattress is designed to solve 5 common sleep problems:

• tossing & turning
• lack of support
• sleeping too hot or cold
• partner disturbance
• mattress roll off or sag

Basically, this is the mattress designed to put those sheep you might be counting out of business for good. The Perfect Sleeper line has three different levels of products that can accommodate every budget, with standard queen pricing ranging from $399 – $1299) (so no need to scour the internet for the right price and just roll the dice like I did last year!).

Serta has also made some advancements to the Perfect Sleeper collection in 2015, including adding Cool Action Gel Memory Foam in select models,  Custom Support® Individual Advantage coils in select models and a new Perfect Sleeper Memory Foam line, which I am especially excited about, because it provides a memory foam top right along with those awesome individual advantage coils. It’s like a hybrid mattress, which gives you the best of both models for a reasonable price. 

While I was at the shop checking out all the mattress options, I also learned about Serta’s adjustable foundations. I’ve never had a bed with an adjustable head, unless you count stacking up my pillows in various ways! Ha!

The Pivot model is what Serta offers to allow you to adjust the head of the mattress, and the Motion Essentials model adds adjustments at the foot of the bed so you can do some pretty awesome lounging (I tried it…it was AWESOME!).

Stay tuned to see exactly what we decided to bring home and whether or not it works for us. We’re excited about having the Serta experience and about choosing a company that is passionate about ensuring that their customers sleep soundly every night.

Feel free to share below which of the 5 common sleep problems you currently experience. Do you have a mattress that gives you trouble? Or that you totally love? I want to hear about it!