Help me buy a wedge pillow!

December 21, 2018 8:59 PM

I want to buy a wedge pillow to help with GERD, but am finding the options overwhelming. Looking for personal recommendations, snowflakes within!

So, the bare minimum of effort has not done much to help with my GERD. This sucks enough that I'm actually ready to make a good effort to address it, including cutting down on caffeine/being more brutal in diet restrictions and trying to sleep on an incline.

I'd like to buy a wedge pillow to help with this, so I'm looking for personal recommendations of ones that you have used with good results. It does have to ship to Canada though. Bonus points if there was NO gross scent when you got it, it has a hypoallergenic cover, and I could sleep on my side (sadly I am mainly a stomach sleeper which will not mesh well with the wedge pillow).

Thanks for any recommendations or advice that you have!

posted by DTMFA to Health & Fitness (8 answers total)

My husband and I both found that we could not sleep with a wedge pillow. We would wake up huddled uncomfortably below them, having slid down as far as possible.
An "old wives' tale": turn over on your left side and cover up your shoulder.
This actually has some benefit because of how the stomach is oriented. You also might try Activia - not just plain yogurt w/o the stuff Activia has. Good luck.
Oh, and Merry Christmas. Beware of all the rich food and booze.
posted by Cranberry at 12:35 AM on December 22, 2018

Hi! I just bought a wedge pillow last month!

It's the Brentwood Home Zuma Therapeutic Foam Bed Wedge Pillow, Made in California 10-inch (Amazon link).

I like mine a lot. I think with wedge pillows, you either love them or you hate them, and you really don't know which it'll be until you try it. Mine fits your qualifications -- there was no stinky offgassing of the foam, it's hypoallergenic (the cover is sort of quilted and squishy), and I sleep on my side. At 33USD, it was worth it for me to try it. It's pretty firm.

The funny thing is, I use mine balanced on its shortest length with my pillows wedged up against it, so my head is almost upright. I've always slept with tons of pillows so it feels natural to me, but I don't think that's how it's intended to be used.

I can't sleep on my left side anymore because reasons, but seconding that sleeping on your left side really helps!

And otc omeprazole has been a godsend. IANYD, but you should ask yours. I take it early in the morning, a good 30-60 mins before taking any food, and it's really cut down on the problems.
posted by mochapickle at 2:06 AM on December 22, 2018

The wedge pillow we bought was too big. So we put a two by four under the mattress at the top and that worked - in other words my husband only needed a small incline to work.
Now he also discovered that drinking water with some baking soda in it works better than any medication he has used.
posted by cda at 3:40 AM on December 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

I bought the cheapest locally available wedge pillow at Walmart to try before I bought a nicer one, and two years later I’m still using it. I like that it has a removable, washable cover.

(I think it does help with my reflux, but unless I sleep on my back, it’s not the most comfortable thing to sleep on. I cannot sleep on my stomach on it and sleeping on my side with it puts a lot of pressure on my hips. In an ideal world, I’d elevate the head of my bed, but that’s not feasible, so.)
posted by rebeccabeagle at 6:17 AM on December 22, 2018

I have this one:
https://relaxtheback.com/products/purefit-adjustable-wedge-system

It's pricey, but really comfortable and it's especially nice that you can adjust it in a lot of ways. The covers are removable/washable.
posted by tangosnail at 6:23 AM on December 22, 2018

I bought a wedge pillow and it effectively mangled my neck and shoulder - with bonus points that I kept finding myself sleeping below it (either because I 'slid' down it or got fed up while sleeping). I am a stomach sleeper, too. My beloved husband built a bed frame with a built-in incline and it made a huge difference. This may not be possible for you (it's a bit of an undertaking to build a whole bed frame!) but I very strongly recommend finding a way to jack up the head of your bed instead of getting a wedge pillow. Very, very strongly.
posted by VioletU at 7:32 AM on December 22, 2018 [2 favorites]

I sleep on my stomach and use a wedge pillow for gerd. I just can’t fall asleep in any other position. To give my arms a place to go and to help offset the annoying sliding down off the pillow, to wake with my feet hanging off the bed, I place a regular bed pillow as a spacer then the wedge pillow so the wedge is over a foot from the head of the bed. Then I use a 2nd pillow which rests on the 1st spacer pillow. The wedge is under my midsection and upper body yet I can lay on my stomach and my arms wrap around the top reg. pillow. The only time it aggravates my gerd is if I have a full stomach which you already know is the worst so that’s rarely done.

A dose of gaviscon before bed helps me a ton also. The gaviscon sold in Canada is better than the one in the states, I always buy a bottle when we go to Windsor.
posted by RichardHenryYarbo at 8:21 AM on December 22, 2018

Response by poster: Thanks, all the answers here are very helpful!
posted by DTMFA at 8:09 AM on December 23, 2018