I love our new bed

The Saga of a Full Size Bed

Here in a few days, my husband and I will be celebrating our second anniversary (yeah!). For the entirety of those two years, we have been sleeping on a bed that is much too small for us. How small? Well, my husband is six foot two inches. I am five foot two inches. Here is a picture from Christmas last year to help give you an idea of our height difference. It’s a good thing I don’t like heals, because no amount of heals would help equalize our height differences. Maybe if I wore stilts . . . .

Well, as you can see, my husband is a big man, and for the  entire time we’ve been married, we’ve slept in a–wait for it–a full size bed. Yes, you heard me correctly. We slept in a full size bed, the same bed he’s been sleeping in since before college. At first we were fine with it. After all, we liked to cuddle. And that newlywed glow? Let me tell you, it’s a real thing. But it didn’t last long.

Cuddling aside, us both sleeping on it is kind of laughable. My husband sleeping on it by himself was laughable. He simply did not fit. There was really only one way for him to sleep on it without his feet hanging off it–diagonally. That, as you can imagine, took up a lot of room. Then you add me, and unless I lay on top of him, my only option is to lay all curled up on my side. I rarely had enough room to sleep flat without one shoulder either hanging off the edge of the bed or the other cramped against my hubby.

Here is a picture of our old bed, just so you know how small it was. As you can see, it was laundry day and our cat was . . . um, helping out. And she didn’t particularly like me interfering with her job, either.

Two years into this, we decided enough was enough. Neither of us were getting a proper night sleep on the thing. Also, my shoulders and hands ached more days than not from sleeping in positions they weren’t meant to stay in for eight hours straight. So we went down to the local Denver mattress store, lay on half a dozen beds (Okay, I was the one trying out all the beds. Michael was more interested in talking to the sales person) before we settled on a brand new, $900, King Size mattress. It took three weeks for the silly thing to come in, but the wait was worth it. The thing is huge!

As you can see from the pic, there is literally no place I could stand in the bedroom where I could get the entire bed and both dressers in the frame. It is almost twice the size of our old bed. The first thing we did when it arrived was, of course, lay on the thing. This thing is so big we can literally lay on the edges, stretch out our arms and not touch each other. Not to mention we can both roll over and still have plenty of room to ourselves. My husband can lay on the bed properly now, and his feet do not dangle off the edge. In fact, he has about four inches to spare. Four inches!

And did you know that when you buy a brand new bed, you are supposed to jump on it? It’s true. The sales person said that we needed to walk on the mattress for five minutes every night before you sleep in order to break it in. For at least a month. I’m wearing a silly grin on my face just thinking about it. I haven’t jumped on a bed in years, and here I am doing it for a month straight.

My husband is very upset at the fact that he cannot share in the fun. He can barely stand on the bed without conking his head on the ceiling fan. Oh, the woes of being tall! Poor baby. That’s ok–more jumping for me.

But do you know the worst–or maybe the best–thing about having a brand new mattress? Having to get out of it in the morning. It’s been four days since we’ve gotten the mattress, and we’ve yet to drag ourselves out of it before 8AM. That may not sound bad to you, but my husband has to work in the mornings. Sure, he works from home, but he still has to get out of bed first!

And just so you know, the pain in my hands and my shoulders are clearing up. I’m hoping the pain continues to go and stays away. Fingers crossed!