During this pregnancy I have experienced a lot of pain while sleeping. When I had a good long think about it I realised the mattress was 15 years old and had lived a rough life of share housing and general wear and tear. The springs on my side were beginning to poke through.
After the long process we went through to obtain a mattress for Little Fearse’s first big bed I wasn’t looking forward to going through finding an ethical source for a mattress for our bed. Firstly, I knew it had to be new. We have one Little Fearse (most of the night), one Big Poppa Fearse (when he hasn’t been booted to the couch to make room for my tummy), one Mama Fearse and soon one Miniscule Fearse (in side carred cot) sleeping in the bed. I also desperately wanted a mattress as low in toxicity as possible and from as ethical a source as possible.
We started our search in two ways – researching non-toxic mattresses and the type of toxins we can expect to find in a regular mattress and asking our dedicated community of likers on our Facebook page. These avenues geared us with a good grounding for further research.
There are two Australian based companies that deal in organic mattresses. One of these had a store local enough to visit and the other would have required us to buy online. Both of these use different components to make up their mattresses and have differing views on the health benefits of these components. Are box springs damaging our health, or not? This resulted in a heck of a lot more reading.
Eventually, knowing the information I found would vary in opinion I had to make a check list of our most desirable factors and do a bit of research on the ground.
Our priorities were:
– considering the life span of a mattress this needed to be comfortable to sleep on first and foremost
– non-toxic (and non-latex, as it isn’t great for bed sharing with babies and can retain quite a bit if heat)
– Australian made
– small / local business
– organic materials (or at least a high percentage of these)
– within a reasonable price range (we aimed for less than $2000au).
I waited until I went on maternity leave to start visiting stores, knowing I’d need to dedicate a bit of time to this. In the end I only visited two stores because I found what I wanted quite quickly after all the reading I had done.
I went to large Australian owned chain store, Bev Marks, which stocks Australian made furniture and mattresses. I spoke to a salesman there who very kindly answered my myriad of questions and made recommendations. They do not stock an organic range or non-toxic range but he did suggest using a regular mattress with a latex topper or, alternatively, buying floor stock that would have already off-gassed the immediate toxins that a new mattress needs to shed. He gave me some really great insight into how mattresses are made. Being a smaller business than some meant they’d be able to accommodate some of my needs. For example if I chose a mattress that needed to be made for us he said they’d be willing to off-gas in their own storeroom for two weeks so that those toxins would not need to be leeched into our home. I tried three very comfortable mattresses instore that ranged from about $1700 – $2500.
Armed with that information we headed down to San Remo to visit the Organature. This place ticked A LOT of our boxes and I was really hoping they’d suit our needs. I had read in several organic mattress reviews that organic mattresses were notoriously less comfortable – often quite hard. Due to my enlarged state at the moment I was really not keen on buying a wonderful non-toxic, locally as sourced, organic mattress that was hell to sleep on.
Organature is a business that previously ran from a family farm in San Remo, just off Phillip Island in Victoria’s south. It recently opened a shop front in San Remo but also sells their products online. They make all their mattresses in Melbourne using organic cotton sourced on the world market. The mattresses also contain a box spring inner. Little Fearse, BP and I visited the store and all climbed into their display bed together. It was firm but still very comfortable. I would say, though, that it was less comfortable than my favourite of the Bev Marks mattresses. When one of us rolled over the others weren’t disturbed, which is a huge bonus when you have a family bed. There was absolutely no smell on the mattress, though admittedly the Bev Marks mattresses on the showroom floor also had no discernable smells. An added bonus is that the mattress only cost approximately $1500 – well within our range and cheaper than our preferred Bev Marks mattress.
Of course we bought an Organature mattress because in the end it ticked all our boxes. We managed to achieve what I thought was impossible – an ethical new purchase that suited both our family needs and our philosophy.
There are some cons to buying an organic mattress that are worth being aware of. They need to be in a well ventilated room to avoid growing mould as there are no anti-fungal sprays or pesticides used on the materials. This means we won’t be able to use a humidifier when Little Fearse is sick anymore unless she is in her own room. Because this mattress is made up of cotton that is sort of like honeycomb cardboard it will compress over time. To ensure this is done evenly the mattress needs to be turned and flipped every day for the first week, once a week for the next month and then once a month for the duration of its life. It is advised to get it out in the sun once in awhile, too. At 48kg moving the mattress is a hefty task that has left BP swearing profusely each morning so far. I am also really nervous about Little Fearse wetting the bed or (as one friend kindly pointed out) the possibility of my waters breaking prior to labour while I’m in bed! This prompted me to make another new purchase of two cotton queen sized mattress protectors. This I researched less but I already knew of a great Australian small business that makes these. I couldn’t find any queen sized second hand and couldn’t afford to wait, so I made the purchase anyway.
Thanks to all those in our community that shared their mattress purchasing experiences along the way. It has been about 6 months since I started research, so I’m hoping this post will be helpful for others on similar quests.
Mama xx
PS I know we’ve named specific companies in this post which we usually avoid doing but I felt it was important to share what we’ve learned for those that are also going through the research phase of mattress purchasing. I haven’t included links because I’m pretty sure every one of our readers is adept at using Google. I’ll stress that this is not an endorsed or sponsored post and any information is relying on my (preggo brain) memory or opinion alone. I hope someone out there can use this to springboard their own investigations.
The Fearse Family 