Three in the morning was my worst hour. I would wake up on my left side with the left knee aching and realize my knees were pressed together like two fists. The right knee, the one that had the meniscus trimmed when I was 47, was fine. The left one, the arthritic one, did not like being squashed. I would roll onto my back, stare at the ceiling, and listen to Carol breathe.
I am Gus Mattingly. Sixty-three, retired union pipefitter out of St. Charles, Missouri, 31 years kneeling on concrete and climbing ladders. Osteoarthritis in the left knee since I was 58, diagnosed by an orthopedist after a year of stiffness on the stairs. I am not a doctor and I do not play one online. What I can tell you is what two years of sleeping with the Contour Legacy leg and knee pillow between my knees has done for my nights, and what it has not done.
Waking up with your knees pressed together? This is the smallest thing that helped me.
The Contour Legacy is a foam pillow that goes between your knees. That is the whole idea. Two years on, it is the only thing I have kept on my side of the bed without a break.
Amazon See Today's Price on Amazon →It stops your knees from touching at 3 a.m.
This is the whole reason I own the thing. Sleeping on my side, my top knee slid down until it rested on the bottom one. Bone on bone, or close enough. Twenty minutes of that and the left knee would start in with the dull ache that wakes you up but does not quite wake you up enough to fix it. The Contour goes between the knees and holds a gap there. Not a big gap. Enough. I noticed the difference on the fourth or fifth night, not the first. Give it a week before you decide.
It keeps your top leg from sliding forward and dragging your back with it.
Here is the mechanical part, and it took me a while to understand it. When you sleep on your side with nothing between your knees, the top leg tends to drop forward and down. That pulls your hip out of line, and your lower back takes the twist. The listing describes exactly that, and I can tell you from two years of it that once the top leg has something to land on, it stays put. My back stopped complaining in the mornings. The knee is my problem, but the back was getting dragged into it.
It takes the weight of one leg off the knee that is against the mattress.
Whichever knee is on the bottom carries the other leg when they are stacked. Mine is the left, and on a bad night it felt like someone was kneeling on it. With the pillow in place, the top leg rests on foam instead of on my knee. That is not a treatment. It is just less load for seven hours. My physical therapist, who has never once told me a product would fix anything, said taking pressure off the joint at night was a reasonable thing to try. That is about the strongest endorsement I can give it.
Your hips stay stacked instead of twisting all night.
Carol can tell you: I used to wake up and my whole lower half felt wrung out. That is the hip twist. When the top leg drops and the knee has nothing to rest on, the pelvis rotates and the spine follows it. The pillow holds the leg at roughly the height of the other one, so the hips stay square. I noticed it in my lower back first, then in how much easier it was to get out of bed. It never touches the knee directly. It fixes the line the knee is sitting in.
It fits between your knees without taking over the bed.
Ten inches long, nine and a half wide, and the listed weight is 198 grams. Smaller than a loaf of bread, lighter than most of the tools I carried for 31 years. It sits between the knees and does not shove Carol toward the edge of the mattress. I have slept with it in a queen bed at home and in a motel double on a fishing trip, and it crowded neither one. If you are picturing a body pillow, this is not that.
Ten inches by nine and a half, 198 grams, and it did more for my sleep than anything else I have bought for this knee.
The foam pushes heat away instead of turning into a swamp.
I run hot. Always have. Anything that sits between my knees for eight hours had better not trap heat, and a plain block of foam would. Contour uses what they call temperature regulating foam, with the claim that it moves heat outward. I cannot verify the physics and I am not going to pretend I can. I can tell you that after two summers with it, I have never once woken up because the pillow was hot. That is more than I can say for the neck pillow I bought years ago and gave to the dog.
The cover comes off and goes in with the laundry.
Sixty-two percent polyester, 38 percent Lyocell, and the cover is washable, which matters more than it sounds like it should. A pillow that lives between your knees collects sweat and skin and, in my case, whatever is on my jeans after a day in the yard. I pull the cover, run it through with the regular load, and let it air dry. Two years in, the cover has held up fine. The foam core has never gone in the machine and never will. Read the tag.
The memory foam has not flattened out after two years of nightly use.
Cheap foam flattens. By two in the morning a flattened pillow is the same as no pillow, and you are back to knees on knees. This one is memory foam and it is described as soft, and mine has not collapsed. There is a slight dent where my knees sit, which I take as a sign it is doing its job rather than a defect. Two years, every single night, which is more nights than I have gotten out of most things I have bought for this knee.
It rides in a duffel bag on overnight fishing trips.
On overnighters to Mark Twain Lake, it comes with me. Small and light enough to go in the duffel beside my reels, and it does not get left in the truck. The first night in a strange bed is usually the worst night for my knee, because none of my usual setup is there. Having the same pillow makes a motel bed less of a gamble. Carol thinks it is funny that I pack a knee pillow for a fishing trip. Carol is also not the one awake at three.
It does not fix the knee. It fixes the night.
I want to be straight with you, because a lot of what gets sold for knee pain is not straight with anybody. This pillow will not rebuild cartilage. It will not replace the exercises my PT gave me. It will not stop the left knee from being arthritic. What it does is make seven hours of the day easier to get through, and a night without a 3 a.m. wake-up changes how the next morning goes. My knee is easier to live with. That is the claim. I would rather make a small true one than a big false one.
What I'd Skip
Before Carol found this, I tried the free versions. A regular bed pillow folded in half goes flat in an hour and ends up on the floor. A rolled towel works for about two nights and then you are hunting for it in the dark at three in the morning. Sleeping flat on my back was the worst of the bunch, because my knee would stiffen up and I would pay for it on the stairs all the next day. If you have tried those and they failed, it is not because you did it wrong.
Two things I would tell a friend before they buy. Give it a full week, because night one tells you nothing except that it is new. And do not expect it to replace your doctor, your physical therapist, or the ice pack and the exercises they gave you. Mine helps me sleep. That is a smaller claim than the packaging makes and a bigger deal than it sounds. My doctor and my PT still call the shots on this knee, and I would say the same to you about yours.
Two years, every night, and the left knee is easier to live with in the morning.
If your knees knock together the moment you roll onto your side, this is a cheap experiment to run for a week. It did not cure anything. It gave me my nights back.
Amazon Check Today's Price on Amazon →