The Bedtime Floor Killed My Back. Enter the Camping Air Mattress.
This post contains affiliate links. I only write up things I've actually used.
Bedtime has a classic ending: you fall asleep on the floor.
You're lying next to your kid, patting their back, and you lose consciousness first. You come to at 2 a.m., still on the floor. Which brings us to a piece of very ordinary physics: floors are hard. A back in its thirties, left on a wooden floor for a few hours, will be properly broken by morning.
I don't have the energy to carry myself to bed every night. And buying a second futon means the room becomes a futon.
So I brought in a camping air mattress (FIELDOOR).
What It's Actually Like
- Five centimeters is not for show. The hardness of the floor genuinely disappears, and my back's survival rate went up in a way I could feel.
- It rolls up when you're not using it. Unlike a futon, it doesn't annex the room. This was the deciding factor.
- The built-in pillow is a quietly good thing. It makes the transition into passing-out position smoother.
- The honest downsides, of which there are two. First, it takes a few minutes to inflate. It calls itself "self-inflating," but the finishing puffs are a job for your own lungs. Second, in deep winter the cold of the floor still works its way up through those five centimeters. The winter floor is strong.
It was sold as camping gear. In our house it has been fully reassigned to bedtime duty. Probably not what the manufacturer had in mind, but repurposing things is going to be filed under parenting wisdom.
