Saturday, September 1, 2007

The princess and the pea

My mom is a notoriously poor sleeper. She's very particular about her sleeping arrangements and everyone knows if she hasn't slept well. As a result, both of my brothers and I have murphy beds in our homes (her bed of choice away from home).

After my first guest in Krakow told me that the sofa bed in the guest room was very hard, I started to panic. What could I do to make the bed more comfortable? Several helpful North Americans suggested I buy the egg shell crate foamy things you can put on beds in North America.

No such thing in Krakow.

So off I went (again) to Ikea to find something soft to put on the bed. My first attempt was a pillowy mattress cover. My second house guest said it was fine, but I knew it wouldn't be enough.

Before my third set of guests arrived, I went back to Ikea to find something else. This time I bought a mini mattress that was 5 cm thick to put on top of the bed. The third house guests said it was just fine (and one of those house guests sleeps on an extremely soft mattress called the Debutante).

I was hopeful that this solution would be enough - sofa bed, 5 cm foamy mattress, and pillowy mattress cover. For the first night it seemed to be.

But then a few days later, Mom admitted to me that she found the bed uncomfortable. So off we went to Ikea again. Mom's favourite option was a 30 cm thick memory foam type mattress (Dad looked aghast as he mentally calculated not only the price in CDN dollars, but how we would get it into the car and carry it up 61 steps). Fortunately, that one wasn't available in the correct size.

Instead Mom settled for a 10 cm thick foam mattress topper. Dad and I were relieved that it fit into the car.

Back at home, we swapped the 5 cm thick foamy for the 10 cm one. The next day, it was decided that the 5 cm thick foamy would also go on.

Since then, she's slept just fine (except when Dad is snoring). I haven't tried inserting a pea under all of those layers yet.

1 comment:

Donna said...

I'm in an "outing" moood. Yes, the debutante is Chris. Although to be fair, I'm not sure if we purchased the debutante, or if he was just wishing we had.