By the time I got it home, I was wondering whether the benefits of the Kally Sleep Pillow – which promises to give you a “comfortable and deeper” sleep by adapting to your body shape to give support – were going to be worth the stress of wrestling a massive fabric sausage across the city on public transport.
What had started as a neatly rolled package, had fast unfurled as I’d battled it down escalators and squeezed it onto a rush hour Tube – leaving me carrying a shoulder-height bolster pillow in the face of unfriendly stares.
And yet, I knew I needed to try a new approach to sleep. It’s something I’ve always struggled with, but over the last few months, things had become really bad. After I (unknowingly) injured my shoulder at the gym, rolling onto it at night had become really painful – added to the fact I find it hard to drop off in general, and bedtime had become pretty tough.
Your shoulders might be fine, of course. I hope they are! But even if they’re the most perfectly supple joints, there’s still reason to consider this saveloy-shaped wonder. Yes, it’s aimed at people who are injured, in post-recovery, or pregnant (when my friend saw it in my room, she demanded to know why I had a pregnancy pillow), but it’s also designed to help with posture if you’re reading or working in bed.
And that’s before we talk about its snuggle factor – soft and squidgy to touch, this bedtime bratwurst is made from material that scrunches and then slowly bounces back to its original form.
For the first four weeks of use – when the pain in my shoulder was at its peak – the pillow’s brilliance more than made up for the horror of carting it through that rush-hour commute.
Previously, I’d been forced to lie on my non-injured shoulder all night, leaving my injured shoulder drooping down, unsupported. I had tried resting it on a cushion, but the cushion tended to fall off the bed during the night, and the next morning I’d have pain in my shoulder if I tried to lift my arm.
With the sausage pillow, things were so much more comfortable. To give possibly too much information – but the practical details of how you do actually sleep with a massive bolster cushion in your bed are kind of important – I slept spooning it, the top of the sausage under my head as a pillow, my arm on top at a right angle, and my legs wrapped around the bottom.
Whatever position I shaped it into, the pillow stayed put. And while there was no doubt that it helped my shoulder, I was also in no hurry to ditch the pillow once my injury got better.
Here’s where I must add: I sleep in a double bed alone, so there was more than enough room for me and my squidgy bedfellow. If you already share your sleeping space with someone else – and your bed isn’t massive – it might feel a bit crowded.
Of course there were a few times it was annoying to share my bed with a supersized cushion. Some nights, I woke to find I’d kicked it on the floor during the night, and if you’re sensitive to heat, you might not fancy cuddling a bolster all night. But most of the time, I loved this unlikely addition to my bedding.
Did it help me into a deeper sleep? That might be pushing it a bit. But here’s what I do know: I haven’t had bad sleeps with the pillow, it has made me excited to get into bed because the lure of its squidgy loveliness is so great, and yeah – I definitely did have a more comfortable night’s sleep.
[Read More: I tried an anti-snoring pillow, but did it work?]
For me, the beauty of the sausage pillow long-term is its versatility. Want to prop yourself up and read in bed? Use the sausage pillow. Need something to support a tablet so you can watch something in bed? Sausage pillow. Hoping to warm yourself up because it’s still cold under the duvet? Spoon the pillow.
These days, post-injury, I’ve been positioning the bolster in an upside down V shape on my bed – I place my head at the point of the V, and I can turn left or right and have my head cushioned supportively.
It’s become a comfort; a bedtime staple I don’t want to get rid of anytime soon.
The Kally Pillow is available in five different colours and retails at £49.99. Buy it here.
We all work hard to earn our money – so it shouldn’t feel like hard work to spend it well. At HuffPost Finds we’ll help you find the best stuff that deserves your cash, from the ultimate lipstick to a durable iron to replace the one that broke (RIP). All our choices are completely independent but we may earn a small commission if you click a link and make a purchase.