Memory Foam Mattress - an update

Those of you who follow this blog from month to month may be wondering how I am getting on with my loathed memory foam mattress. Not very well is the answer. I am now beginning to wonder if it wasn't all a plot on the part of my insomniac husband to inflict the same problem on myself, except that he's far too nice to do that to me. But sleeplessness induces paranoia you know. If pushed, I would say that I have 'got used to it' to some extent. That is to say that the smell has disappeared, and I also manage to fall asleep on it. But this is because I delay going to bed until exhaustion really sets in, and then read for half an hour or so. So I fall asleep at one or one thirty ....and then I wake up again. You know that feeling when you look at the clock, hoping and praying it will be morning, only to find it is three thirty, or four at the latest? At that point I will be (a) so hot that I feel as if the whole bed is going into meltdown and me with it (b) utterly uncomfortable with pains in various joints and (c) stuck. I now think that whether or not you can get on with these mattresses depends very much on the kind of sleeper you are. Some people move around more than others. My husband lies like a stone. I fidget. But you can't toss and turn with any ease on memory foam so you don't fidget, you struggle. It's like lying on very firm mud. It also seems to have the same effect on my lovely duck down pillows, so that they start to feel as though all the individual feathers have solidified. So I toss and turn (with extreme difficulty) and alternate between extremes of heat (under the duvet) and cold (outside the duvet). In the morning, Alan's side of the bed looks as neat as when he got into it. Mine, by contrast, looks like that scene in the M R James ghost story 'Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You' - you know - the horribly crumpled bedclothes in the spare bed. My sister in law, well warned by me in advance, tells me that they have just bought a new sprung mattress with a thin layer of memory foam on the top. She tells me it is extremely comfortable. This does not make me feel any better. I need sleep. I need to knit up my ravelled sleeve of care a bit. Dear God, I need a new bed.