Drawing a Line in Dallas
On bedsharing with twins and the hallway floor
“He would sleep in the hallway,” she said. “On the floor. To make sure they couldn’t get to our bedroom.”
Before I could ask her to repeat that – because there was certainly no way I heard that correctly – everything blurred. Then two little faces appeared. A boy and a girl, almost three years old, studied me with furrowed brows.
I heard laughing, shuffling, and then someone gently pulled them away. An older woman corralled them back into the living room.
This was the classic ranch-style home you’d probably imagine when someone says Texas suburbs. There were double the toys, picture books, and sippy cups on every surface. I was glad she hadn’t tidied up for me.
During these consultations, the magic only happens when everything is real.
Then Hayley1 was back on screen. She laughed, “Sorry. They wanted to meet you.”
I asked her to go back to her story because I think I misunderstood what she said about the hallway. “Yes!” She nodded hard. “Alan was so against cosleeping that he physically prevented them from coming to our room.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but there were no words. In my five years of working with all sorts of different families around the world, I’d never encountered something like this.
Apparently Hayley and her now-ex-husband had disagreed about cosleeping from the beginning.
She had fallen into bedsharing out of necessity, the way so many twin moms do. It made the near-nonstop night feedings, diaper changes, and wakeups survivable. It made sense to her in a deep, instinctive way that she couldn’t shake.
Alan felt differently.
He put up with it until the twins turned six months, when he got the all-clear from the pediatrician that they could move into a separate bedroom.
But Hayley told me that bedsharing still ended up happening most nights – either by her bringing them into bed or them wandering in, once they learned how to climb out of their cribs.
“At that point, Alan started sleeping on the hallway floor,” she said. “Right outside their bedroom. As a physical barrier to intercept them before they could get to me.”
I took a moment to process that.
This man had chosen the hallway floor over the family bed. Night after night. Rather than compromise on cosleeping, he chose a terrible night’s sleep on hardwood floor, alone, outside a closed door.
“That’s where I drew the line,” Hayley said.
Then, slowly: “The cosleeping didn’t end the marriage. But it was the final straw.”
Her eyes filled, just briefly. At an in-person consultation, I would have given her a hug or reached over and squeezed her shoulder. These moments are frustrating for me on Zoom.
Hayley mentioned that her mother was fully supportive of her decision to cosleep, even though she didn’t cosleep with her own kids back in the 80s. She was the one wrangling the twins in the living room right now, and she had been instrumental since the divorce.
“I want to live my life on my own terms, in my own home. No one will be sleeping on the floor. It’s important that the twins see that.”
We spent the rest of the afternoon in the family bedroom. I pointed out a handful of problem areas, like the space heater and the long drapes that the twins could pull down. We had quite a bit of safety-proofing to do together on our next call.
But Hayley didn’t seem daunted. She seemed, if anything, like a woman who had already gotten through the hardest part.
Would you like a virtual or in-person consultation with me in May?
Hayley’s 3 favorite cosleeping tools:
🙌 Her favorite mattress is still firm and flat, even after two years of bedsharing with twins
💦 She swears this waterproof mattress protector is why the mattress isn’t covered in stains from 2X the spit up, diaper leaks, etc.
👚 This soft pajama set keeps her perfectly not-too-hot, not-too-cold
A few new tools I gave her following our day together:
☁️ Two pairs of these life-changing heated spa booties (one for her, one for mom!)
🧷 A box of these popular overnight training pants to help with potty learning
🗺️ My Bedsharing Bundle for her to reference in the middle of the night, if need be
Tiffany Belanger is a forthcoming author, speaker, and founder of Cosleepy.com — the one-stop shop for practical, research-backed advice on safe bedsharing. She is frequently interviewed by the media as an expert and representative of the educated, Millennial parent who has decided to go against the standard advice. She lives and cosleeps with her husband and two little boys in northern California.
Apply to work with her here.
Names and identifying information have been changed. Story shared with permission.