The Sleep Number Valley

A few weeks ago, I posted a major prop for the Select Comfort Sleep Number bed. I have yet to decide if our previous mattress was so bad that we could have purchased a queen-sized piece of plywood and I would have given it a prop, or if in fact, the Sleep Number did quite literally “let us down.”

The first week of sleep was bliss. I was sleeping through the night again and only waking up moderately achy. We did have the issue of setting the numbers differently from each other, thereby not being able to get anywhere near a snuggle, but we thought we worked that out by averaging our sleep numbers. What we didn’t expect was the “Sleep Number Valley.”

The bed is made of two inflatable chambers in the core. Supporting and surrounding those chambers are several pieces of foam. In between the two chambers are more pieces of foam. After one week of sleeping towards the middle of the bed instead of centered on each of our individual chambers, we created the “Sleep Number Valley”. The foam began collapsing in the middle of the bed and pushing the air chambers out towards the edges of the bed.

There is another activity that frequently occurs on our bed. One night, after a particularly awkward romp together, we realized that our lack of grace was because one of us kept rolling down into the middle of the bed. The next morning, I woke up to Guy’s nose in my ear, each of us on a 30 degree downward slope. He crawled out of “the Valley” and said, “This bed has got to go.”

Lucky for us, Select Comfort offers a 30 day money back guarantee. They have also called numerous times to make sure that we have been sleeping comfortably, almost as if they were expecting us to say “no” at any moment.

There is a certain amount of guilt I have in returning the bed because the people with whom we have dealt have been very nice. The guilt goes away each time I get into the bed, have to pump it up to 100 again and let it down to the appropriate number again only to then simply roll into the “Sleep Number Valley” and end up with my husband’s elbow in my forehead.

We have to disassemble the bed, box it up, and return it to the warehouse via UPS or Fed Ex. It will not be easy or cheap. However, it is much better than going to sleep every night knowing that you have blown $2000 on a bed in which it is impossible to snuggle.

I will still give props to customer service, and our salesman, Ted. The mattress cover and pillow we purchased from the store are also very dreamy. I must amend my prop for the bed though. If you like the other person you sleep with every night and might possibly enjoy a snuggle, skip the Sleep Number bed and stick with a good old traditional mattress.