Explain your bed / mattress set up to prevent waking each other up all night?

[NattyBeaker]

I'm turning in to a really bitter and angry person due to severe lack of sleep. Have a baby, who doesn't sleep great but when she does sleep through it doesn't matter anyway because dh moves and the whole bed shakes, or snores and wakes me up even if I've managed to drift off. We wake each other up so the feeling is mutual!
Have a king size bed frame and can't work out if I can just put two singles on it? Does the gap get annoying? Would zip link be better or will I still feel him move? Or just get a memory foam mattress? I had one before but didn't like how hot I got.
Since having a baby everything wakes me up.

Maybe tell him it definitely WON'T be a marriage when you split up because you can't function in no sleep??

I bed shared with my daughter when she was born and her dad moved into the spare room. It was great!

Two single beds strapped together (you can get the straps on Amazon for like 15 pounds).
This turns it into a super king so one bottom fit ten sheet over both helps them to look and stay as one bed.

Then we have two separate duvets as it means that I can roll myself like a burrito etc and he can toss and turn and it doesn't matter.

So technically two separate beds, but turned into one, with two separate duvets.

It works AMAZINGLY. best sleep of our marriage.

Oh and a fan for the noise, helps muffle the snoring. I prefer a fan to a white noise machine and just point it at the wall of too cold.

Honestly just try separate beds if it’s making you that miserable. Me and DH sleep separately for different reasons, I cosleep on a floor bed with 1 year old in his room. But it’s still absolutely a marriage! We spend the evening together in “our” bedroom watch tv, chat, are intimate etc, then when it’s time for lights out and literally roll over and go to sleep I move to the baby’s room. It’s fine. Unless you are having wild sex all night or cuddling all night I can’t see what difference different bedrooms make if you still spend the evening together. Everyone sleeps, everyone’s happy. Btw I prefer sleeping with a snuggly baby than a snoring man anyway.

You're living my ideal life!

Super king sized bed but it’s a zip and link bed so we have out distinct sides. We also have separate duvets. Lots of cuddles before bed etc and then off to sleep, it’s lovely. We had to sleep in a standard double last week at a relative’s house and it felt tiny in comparison.

Superking and a mixed sprung/memory foam bed. Not sure the rules on memory foam and babies now but I remember being worried enough as a new mum that I slept on a regular double mattress with baby.

When you say he won't have seperate rooms, what I'm hearing is thst he won't compromise and you need to suck it up. You know he can't actually make that decision for you, you can just sleep in the other room and flip the choice back on him: sort out your sleep and ill.come back to the marital bed? Rarely do men walk away from a marriage unless they have another bed to go to so don't let his rules scare you, you can do what you want.

Separate rooms for us, works bloody brilliantly! Have been like this for 16 years, yes we are still intimate! Only time we sleep together is holiday but they tend to be bigger beds so no touching and I can still kick him when he snores, but earplugs are a god send

Who made him boss? Also separate bedrooms here since dd was around 3.

Stop letting him make decisions for you!

My husband was sleeping in the spare room for years for this reason. We now sleep in large European sized single beds with very study frames, pushed together. Separate duvets. He's not slept in the spare room since. He's not an awful snorer so I can give him a shove.

Our tactic as both DH and I are terrible sleepers (thanks years of shift work):

Ultra firm mattress. This stops the wave effect when he turns over so that I barely feel him move now.

However, have a soft mattress topper on top of it as the ultra firm was a bit hard for him (I like it more).

We also have a spare room for those nights where you just can't bear it. It's essential even though not well used. Because it's just the occasional night, DH doesn't mind (he's a bit like yours and while he wouldn't dream of telling me where I can sleep, he worries that regularly sleeping separately will encourage less emotional connection, etc.).

If he’s getting plenty of sleep how come he gets to decide if you share a bed or not? We had two double duvets on a king size bed which helped for a while but switched to separate bedrooms years ago when my eldest was a baby. Helped us get through that stage, then I wanted to catch up on sleep, then I was pregnant again….You get the idea. But I adore it and there’s no going back.

You need to sort this. We had separate rooms for years. Life saver. Once he got a CPAP for his sleep apnea, we didn't need that any more. Now we have a super king with two duvets. It's brilliant. Sleep is everything, nothing works if that doesn't.

Singles work well for us. I feel like doubles would be too bulky.

We have an emperor. 7ft by 7ft. Zip linked but I don't bother doing the zip up as we both lie at the outside edge of our respectiv mattresses. Also separate duvets.

Same here-life changing!

I haven't RTFT yet but this is unacceptable from him.

It's torture for you to be sleep deprived like this. It's not a "marriage" for you, to be made miserable and ill by his antisocial noises and behaviour. You have to endure this while he's unconscious, so he likes his version of "marriage"?

If the only way to be with my DH included compulsory bed sharing, I would never have married him.

I find the machine possibly more annoying than DH snoring. I find his breathing plus the noise of the machine keeps me awake anyway..
We do quite often wake each other. I'm not a brilliant sleeper and I disturb DH so no advice I'm afraid. You could always try two singles or is there such a thing as a super king-size bed? Obviously depends how much room you have.

We changed bedframes to something rock solid that doesn't move, and doesn't have sprung slats - it's from Get Laid Beds.

We also have a single duvet each which is great as he has a hideous 15 tog marshmallow and I have a lovely light summer weight one!

So movement wise we are sorted - snoring wise though still a massive issue so he sleeps in the spare room most nights

I agree with PP who said forcing a partner to endure your nocturnal hideousness at the expense of their sleep and wellbeing is bullying.

You don’t need to ‘discuss’ the option of sleeping in separate bedrooms with him, just literally move to the spare room the first time you wake up in the night. You and baby in there.
If he complains that you’re not next to him when he wakes up, just say you couldn’t get back to sleep! He doesn’t get to dictate this, sorry.

We had the best sleep ever on holiday in Italy and pulled back the sheets to see what the mattress was. It is just a zip and link. Two separate mattresses that are not connected. We have room for a super king bed so that is what we have. Also the mattresses are easy to bring up the stairs as they are just singles. We went to a bed manufacturer (look for a bed factory place) and they made our mattress which was not as expensive as you would think. Dh is 6'3" and built like a rugby player, I am average sized. Our mattress is still in peak condition over 10 years later.

Duvets wise we do share but my parents had separate duvet covers as my Father is a cover stealer.

A memory foam mattress can be better than a sprung one for not shaking the whole bed when you roll over. As pp have said, check the bed frame is all done up tightly.

But separate bedrooms in the only solution if there is snoring involved, until the snoring gets treated.

I think he just thinks it's another way we'll get further apart. It's not been easy since having a baby. But I feel like he's not listening to me because sleep is everything and I'm just trying to solve the issue. There's nothing worse than not being able to sleep and it's not even the baby!
So either zip and link or memory foam it sounds like. Our bed frame is pretty solid and has separate slats on each side

I recommend separate bedrooms! DH and I have had our own rooms for years.

I could never go back to sharing a bedroom (let alone a bed!) with another person.