Our Serta Mattress Selection for our Kids

A few weeks back I did a post on how to choose the right mattress for your child. As it turns out, there is a lot to think about when making a new mattress purchase for your little one!  Especially if you want to invest in a quality one to last throughout childhood.

Recently, we went through the process of selecting new Serta mattresses for review for both of our daughters, ages 3 and 6, as result of my participation in the Serta blogger program for 2012, which included complimentary mattresses to help facilitate firsthand reviews.  My girls have NO idea just how lucky they are. No idea.

But I do! My husband and I have been sleeping on the dreamy Serta iComfort Sleep System for a year now and it is the best night’s sleep I have ever had. We also received a complimentary mattress from Serta as part of the 2011 blogger program. Again, LUCKY us!

Since choosing a new mattress can be a confusing process, I wanted to walk you through how we came to our decision on which mattress was right for our little ones.

The first thing we had to consider was what size?

Seeing that we were going to be receiving high quality mattresses, the type of mattress that could last them until they went off to college, perhaps longer, we had to think long term.

For Emma (6 years old), we decided it was time to move her room to our guest room, which was the largest of the sleeping room options. It seemed silly to have the largest room be the one that was least utilized.

Given the fact that she would have more room, we wanted to go with the biggest size that seemed reasonable in the space, which was a Queen. I figured that even if she doest’t take her Queen bed to college, we could always move a Queen size to a guest room down the road.

For Morgan (3 years old), we had more space constraints.  Now that Emma was moving rooms, I wanted to move her to Emma’s old room, but it a rather small space.

But again, seeing that we were receiving high quality mattresses, I didn’t want to opt for a Twin, one that she would end up outgrowing, so we went with the Full. For me, having a GREAT bed that will last a long time took priority.  Now we would just have to do some creative space planning in her new room.

I am really happy we went with the Full, as we now have the flexibility to have both girls sleep in Morgan’s bed, and offer Emma’s Queen along with our other guest room Queen when having multiple house guests like at Thanksgiving with my husband’s whole family comes to visit.

With the sizes selected, we were now off to find the right one!

We took our girls to a local Sit N’ Sleep to try the Serta mattresses out themselves. I might be aging myself, but does anyone remember the children’s book Corduroy?  That cute little bear who finds himself wandering the department store at night amazed at the sea of mattresses? I used to love that book. And after seeing the sparkle in my girls eyes looking at all the beds it reminded me of that!  It was their very own Corduroy moment!

The Serta Mattress selector online suggested the innerspring Perfect Sleeper line for children, so we were definitely interested in having our girls test out the Perfect Sleepers, which is the Official Mattress of the National Sleep Foundation.

I also wanted to look at the Serta iSeries line, which is an innerspring / memory foam hybrid mattress. Now that my husband and I are sleeping on the iComfort memory foam mattress, having experienced the benefits, especially the reduction of tossing and turning, I am a big memory foam fan. And since the girls were used to sleeping on an innerspring mattress, I thought the combination of the two might be a nice choice.

Furthermore, the Serta Cool Action gel memory foam is made with an open-cell structure which is less likely to trap dust and other allergens.  My oldest has a dust allergy, so I thought this might be helpful.

Important to note: Serta does not make claims regarding their memory foam and dust allergies. The most important thing when dealing with dust allergies is the use of the right bedding and mattress protectors, but still, I figured the iSeries might be a good choice given her sensitivity.

But in the end, I really wanted them to decide on the mattress that felt best to their little bodies. So, the rest test began with Serta sheep plushies in hand…

My then two-year-old was no help in the mattress selection, she was still too young and it was a big game to her to bounce from bed to bed.

But my six-year-old knew EXACTLY the mattress that was “coziest” to her. I sort of expected her to say they were all comfortable (which they were) but she truly had one specific model that was the clear choice, the iSeries Merit.

Doesn’t it just look dreamy??

And after my husband and I laid on it, we could see WHY.

It is soooooooooo comfortable!  Soft, and plush, but also really supportive. 

I was somewhat surprised she chose a partial memory foam selection, but after thinking about it, both of our girls spend quite a bit of snuggle time in our iComfort bed, so I think there was something about the iSeries that felt familiar and comforting to them.

The iSeries Merit was the clear winner ~ a choice we were thrilled with!

After the first night sleeping in their new beds, it must have been a pretty big difference to Emma.  Her previous twin mattress was probably the cheapest mattress that could have come with the daybed we bought at the time, and her daybed was a bed I used in our guest room years before she was even born, so I never initially intended for it to turn into her real bed.

When she walked out the first morning after sleeping on her new bed, when I asked how she slept, she said,

“Mom! It’s like a magic bed!  I don’t have to put myself to sleep, it puts ME to sleep!”   

You can’t make stuff like that up ~ my husband looked at me and said, “you won’t get better blog material than that!” She LOVES her new bed.

Morgan went from the crib mattress to her new Full mattress and big girl bed, and transitioned beautifully.  Although she is too young to really tell me how she slept, she often will snuggle into her bed and shout, “cozy!!”

My girls have always been good sleepers as far as sleeping through the night, so I can’t claim that the mattress made them sleep longer or better, but I have to believe that their quality of sleep has improved, because for me personally I noticed a big difference in my quality of sleep once sleeping on our Serta.

Most importantly, it makes me feel so good knowing that my girls are sleeping on a QUALITY mattress. One that is ultra-supportive for their growing bodies.

However, there is one problem.

When putting my youngest down for nap, her bed is so comfortable I have been known to fall asleep on more than one occasion.

Just last weekend, my husband was curious as to why it could take more than 45 minutes to put her down for a nap. My disheveled “just woke up” look probably answered the question when I finally walked out!

If you are in the market to shop for a new mattress for your child, please make sure to check out my first post with some tips and suggestions on how to choose the best mattress for your little one.  You can also go into any Serta retailer and have them test out the beds themselves, which is what I found was the most important part of all!

But the new mattresses also presented another problem: musical rooms. Emma was moving to the guest room, guest room was moving to Morgan’s room, and Morgan was moving to Emma’s room.

I was a little overwhelmed at the thought of re-doing three rooms at once. So I called my friend Shanna from www.myfavoriteeverything.com, an interior designer now getting more back into the business to ask for her help and design expertise.  Basically I gave her our budget and let her do her thang.

Project “Extreme Bedroom Makeover” had begun.

As it turns out, this “problem” turned out to be the BEST thing that could ever happen because we re-did rooms that we have been wanting to for a long time.

And you guys will not BELIEVE what she did to our rooms. They are something out of a magazine.

I am so excited to share I can almost scream. Stay tuned…

[Disclosure: I received our Serta mattresses complimentary as a result of my participation in the blogger program for 2012. And our iComfort as a part of my participation in the 2011 program. My family is so incredibly grateful for this opportunity as we have never slept better and it is a brand I believe in. Opinions are 100% my own, of course!]