Also air mattresses don't give your body any support. Natural latex is about the best for that, and I think futons would be fine too (though I've always found them WAY too hard, miserably uncomfortable and often lumpy). A good friend of mine used to be a mattress sales person. He told me The Sleep Number Bed is always "the best mattress ever!" for people for the first two to three months. Then right as the trial period ends, your body gets used to it and it starts being the worst mattress ever because it has no core of support.
A couple other things I like about the natural latex mattress - it is very dust mite resistant. Great since we have allergies and asthma. Also, we drove around the city trying out mattresses before we bought our Savvyrest. We tried out a dunlop, and it felt very unsteady...hard to describe but sort of like you felt like you were going to fall off, or it would fall out from under you. Ki explained to me that this is how they feel when they are too thin. That was a 2 layer and we don't have that problem at ALL with our 3 layer. 2 layer would probably be just fine for kids though, and you could always get a natural mattress protector and just one layer of latex later on for them when they need it. We also tried some non-natural Talalay mattresses. That all sort of helped us get a vague idea of what firmness etc. we'd need and want.
We were able to buy the Savvyrest from Ki with no problems even though we'd nevr tried one in real life! The thing is, if you get a 3 layer, there are so many different ways you can put in the layers! We got a king sized with which offers even more variety. So we got a layer each of Firm, Medium and Soft. The Soft we got solid layer for the top. Firm and Medium we have split. So my husband's side is (from bottom up) Medium,Firm, Soft and mine is Firm, Medium Soft.
