We recently purchased the Sleep Number cSe for our family. Why is this significant? Because our toddler sleeps in bed with us and I nurse her throughout the night. Here’s a bedsharing mom’s review of the Sleep Number bed.
Sleep Number has not given me anything to write this artlcle. Everything I ever write is honest and based on personal experience.
I knew that our old mattress was a sad excuse for a bed. It was a Serta memory foam and it wasn’t that old; we’d tried to get it replaced but the warranty home kits are a joke, so finally we gave in and started looking for a new bed.
A bit of background here: we have a four year old who sleeps in our room in his own bed, and a one year old who sleeps in the middle of our king bed. I breastfeed throughout the night. I also have spina bifida which has gotten worse since that one year old was born, and am seeing a chiropractor for lumbar and hip pain.
My mom had bought three separate mattresses in the last ten years, and had been ecstatic to finally find one she liked. It was a Sleep Number, and she strongly suggested that I go to the nearest store and check them out.
I get the concept of the Sleep Number and it seems to make a lot of sense: depending on your lifestyle, pain level, or just to change things up, you can customize the firmness of your bed. Literally every night if you want. Sleep Number has beds with various bells and whistles, trim and fabric and cushioning, but the basic idea remains the same. You’ve got a bed built around an air bladder which is run by a pump.
I took my kids while my husband was working and tested out the beds in the store. Some of the lower-end models felt a bit too bare bones for me, although I knew I didn’t want to deal with a lot of pillow top or memory foam toppers.
We learned all kinds of stuff, and now we’ve had the bed for a few months. Here are the different aspects of the bed and what we think.
The Pump
This was something my husband and I were concerned about, particularly as bedsharing parents. When we go to adjust our bed firmness at night (when our kids are already asleep), will the pump noise wake them up?
As a side note, you’re supposed to keep your bed at the maximum 100 firmness during the day, and then once you lay down at night to go to sleep, you lower it to your preferred setting.
The noise isn’t all that bad. The pump will have to be within a foot or two of the bed, either against the wall or behind a nightstand; when you go to let air out (e.g. from 100 down to 45), you will hear the pump click on and release the air, then click off. It’s audible but never makes my kids stir. However, if you need to up the firmness (e.g. add in more air, like from 45 to 60), the noise is considerably more.
We do also use white noise from my alarm clock, and crank it up pretty loud in those few hours when we like to watch TV in the living room.
The Bed
Overall I’m happy with the bed. It’s crazy to see it in pieces, as it’s not a big mattress like you’re used to. Your bed essentially comes in boxes, and it’s assembled with the casing and foam pieces around the air bladders.
We’ve been told that almost all warranty claims are for the remotes, or for the foam pieces. The foam pieces which line the edge of the bed will wear out first because of people getting in and out of bed, sitting on the side of the bed, etc. But we were told that they can be replaced free of charge by going through the warranty process.
The remotes can be a bit of a pain, but the easiest solution is to just use the app. I’ll go over that in a minute.
There is very little motion transfer on our king bed, which is great when you have a little one sleeping with you. I do feel like there is a bit of noise when we move in bed – it is not particularly loud but definitely audible – but I can’t tell if it is from our waterproof cover, or the bed itself. The sound has yet to wake my toddler, however.
The App
It’s so weird to be telling you about an app when I’m doing a bed review, but there you have it.
I think that the app is really convenient and I like it a lot. It negates the need for the remote, and it also has the ability to track lots of sleep data!
The screenshot above is from my iPhone, and shows you a nightly review of what the bed’s computer has tracked. As you can see, it looks at heartrate, breathing rate, movement, etc. It’s really quite comprehensive.
I will note that my 20-pound toddler does throw off the data in the sense that the bed counts her as me; for example, in the screenshot above it says that I went to bed at 9:17pm, when it wasn’t for a few more hours. So the data is skewed by having a kid sleep in bed with you. Your child can also potentially make the movement data inaccurate.
I do look forward to seeing the app track my data once I have no kids in my bed! For right now, the app is really a convenience for when I need to adjust my sleep number at night; beyond that, I glance at the data but I know that having my toddler bedshare makes a lot of it inaccurate.
Overall
All in all, we are happy with our bed. I think that the concept of the bed having “parts” which can be repaired or replaced makes a lot of sense, and I particularly love that I can adjust how firm the bed is and even change it from night to night.
As far as bedsharing, I’m glad that the bed has very little motion transfer and that the pump isn’t overly loud. I also don’t feel like the bed having two “sides” with air bladders on either side of a foam barrier make my daughter lay unevenly in bed. Even though I have a pretty low number and my husband has a pretty high number, I don’t see my toddler getting stuck in a gap.
I do recommend that you use a waterproof mattress pad, and that you inflate both sides of the bed to 100 every morning. I also will reiterate that while the pump computer can track all sorts of information, a lot of the data will be compromised because it’s tracking your toddler as you. The app is really helpful and convenient, though.
You can see Sleep Number’s lineup of products and get more general information on their website.
I hope that this has helped give you some insight as to whether or not a Sleep Number bed is right for your family! You can see all of my cosleeping articles by clicking here. And as always, thanks for commenting and sharing out my content!
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