Can Twins Sleep in the Same Room? Stop Separating Them at Night

Hey TwinMama, I'm so glad you're here. Welcome back to Twin Sleep Talk, the podcast where you'll find parenting wisdom from someone who's been there.

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Today we are talking about something that I get asked about all the time. And it's something that honestly makes me a little bit frustrated when I see other sleep consultants giving advice about it. And that is room sharing with twins. So here's what I see happening all the time. A twin mom reaches out to a sleep consultant and says, my twins keep waking each other up at night.

What do I do? And mostly consultants say to separate them. Put one in your room, put one in living room, in a pack and play, or put one in the nursery or in the guest room. And sure, that might give you one or three good nights of sleep, but here's my question. Then what? What happens when you want to put them back in the same room?

Do you want them to each have their own room forever? No, for some parents the answer is yes.

And some of the parents I work with don't even have a separate room for their twins and they themselves are sharing the room with their twins.

So, mostly consultants don't teach you how to bring them back together. They just teach you how to separate them. And that's a problem. Because here's the truth. Your twins can learn to sleep in the same room. They just need the right method, the right setup, but most of all, they need you to believe that it's

possible.

So today I'm gonna share with you why room sharing is actually better for your twins in the long run and how to make it work. And the exact framework that I use in the Twin Sleep Academy.

Let's dive in.

Okay, so I want to start with a story that I think you're going to relate to. my husband 16 years ago, I could not sleep next to him. Like, I'm talking, okay, listening to all his breathing, different noises that he made, and sometimes I'd be like, okay, is he awake? Is he okay?

is he making that noise? I won't get into the details. But it was a big adjustment. I always had my own room ever since I was a little kid. And for the first few weeks, I thought, I really don't know how I'm gonna make this work. I don't know how I'm gonna sleep with this person right next to me. But you know what happened? I did learn. My body adjusted, my brain stopped treating every little sound like it was something that I had to attend to.

And now 16 years later, I sleep just fine next to him. In fact, I actually sleep better when he's there. But here's the kicker. Okay, so last summer, we went on a family vacation with our five children and we all shared a hotel room. And the next morning, my kids were complaining. Dad was so loud last night and I couldn't sleep, And I was like, wait, he was?

I didn't even notice because I've had 16 years of practice sleeping next to him. My brain has just learned to filter out all his noises, but my kids, they had not. And they weren't used to all the noises, the snoring, you know. And that's exactly what happens with your twins. If you separate your twins every time one wakes up and starts crying, what you're doing is you're actually robbing them of the opportunity to learn

how to sleep through each other's noises. You're teaching your brains that every sound is a disruption and they can't sleep unless it's perfectly quiet.

But if you give them time and practice, they're gonna learn. Just like I learned to sleep next to my husband. Your twins can learn to sleep in the same room, they just need a chance to practice.

Okay, so here's where I get just a little fired up because I see so many twin moms being told by sleep consultants, pediatricians, and well-meaning family members to just separate their twins until they learn.

Those sleep consultants and doctors may not actually have a lot of experience or personal experience with twins. And also, most sleep consultants will do like a two week consultation. And then if you run into any trouble, like say when your twins start waking each other up again, they're gone and they're gonna charge you extra for another consultation. And they still can't help you get them to sleep in the same room. Now in the Twin Sleep Academy,

We do have a membership called the Twin Sleep Tribe where my clients get to hop on a call with me and ask questions in my private Facebook group anytime they want. Even several months after they join the Academy, they can still be part of that membership. Now listen, I get it. When you are exhausted and one twin is waking the other up every single night, separation feels like the only solution. But here's what no one tells you.

Separation is a band-aid. It is not a solution. Because what happens when you want to put them back together in the same room? What happens when they're 18 months old and you still want them to share a bedroom? What happens when one wakes up because they're sick or teething or learning to...

roll over or pull themselves up and you don't know how to get them back on track without separating them.

it develops into a spiral.

because you never taught them how to sleep in the same room in the first place. So I had a family reach out to me a few months ago and they were doing exactly this. They had separated their twins. One was in the nursery and one ended up in a pack and play in the living room when he started crying and he cried really, really loud according to the family. I never heard it.

The mom said to me, I just want them to be back in the same room, but I don't know how to do it without going back to the chaos. And that's the problem. Most of the consultants are going to tell you to separate your twins, but they won't tell you how to bring them back together. I teach the opposite. I teach twin moms to start the way they want to end.

So if you want your twins in the same room long term, then we need to teach them how to sleep in the same room from the beginning. Not by separating them every time there's a hiccup, but by giving them the skills and the practice to learn how to sleep through each other's noises. Because the truth is your twins are going to make noise. They're going to cry. They're going to wake up sometimes.

And if you have to separate them every time that happens, you're teaching them that they can't handle it. But if you give them the tools and the practice, they learn and they can learn pretty fast.

So let's talk about how to actually make room sharing for your twins. Because it's not just about throwing them in the same room, shutting the door, walking away, and hoping for the best. There is a method to this, and if you follow the method, it works. So number one, you have to start with a good setup.

White noise is incredibly important for twins, especially during the learning phase. This could be as simple as a fan. It could be a white noise machine. Some people have fancier, you know, white noise machines or ambient noise machines that do like a pink noise, a brown noise, or other types of ambient noise. Now also, I do think it's best to keep your cribs as separate, as far away as possible in the room.

usually at least three feet.

Now, we aren't gonna be using the cry it out method, at least if you decide to join the Twin Sleep Academy. That's not something I teach.

And honestly, this is just part of why I don't teach those methods. It just gets really loud and really overwhelming when there are two babies. There likely will be some crying, but the goal is to use methods that keep the crying to a minimum and eventually none.

Number two, give them time to adjust. When you first start teaching your twins to sleep in the same room, there is gonna be an adjustment period and that's totally normal. We might wake each other up a few times, one might cry, the other might stir, but the key is not to rush in.

You give them a few minutes to see if they can settle back down on their own because most of the time they actually can.

I had a client in the twin safe Academy named Kaylee who had no choice but to keep her one year old twins in the same room as her. She was really apprehensive about sleep training them at the same time in the same room because she thought it was just going to be a disaster, but she was so tired. She thought for sure they were going to wake each other up all night long and that it was just going to be a complete meltdown.

but we worked through the method and within a week her twins were actually sleeping through the night in the same room together and then with her and her partner. She told me that she just couldn't believe it, they cried for a little while the first night and then one cried and then the other one didn't wake up and she thought for sure it was going to be a disaster.

But it wasn't because her twins weren't. Number three, trust the process. This is the hardest part for twin moms because when you hear one twin cry, your instinct is to rush in and separate them before the other one wakes up because obviously you do not want to be dealing with two crying babies if you can help it. I'm sure we've all been there. It's not fun. It's not pretty. And we'd rather just only have to deal with one at a time.

But when you do that, you are not giving them the chance to learn. You're teaching them that they can't sleep through each other's noises.

You're teaching them that they have to be separated in order to sleep well. But the truth is, they can learn. You just have to trust the process. I work with so many twin families who feel like they just can't let them sleep in the same room because one is just so super loud. And I can tell you with 100 % confidence, twins can absolutely sleep in the same room.

In fact, most of the time they sleep better in the same room because they do end up forming such a sweet bond and they just find comfort in each other's presence, even if they're across the room from each other.

So I want to tell you about another family that I worked with. They had separated their twins because one was a good sleeper and one was a bad sleeper. And the mom said to me that she just didn't think they could be in the same room. One of them wakes up every two hours and he screams so loud that it rattles the walls.

And of course she didn't want him to wake up his brother. So what I told her was that actually the reason that one is that the one twin, I think it was twin B, he was waking up every two hours and it wasn't actually because of the other twin. It was because he didn't have the skills to sleep through the night yet. So we worked on building those skills and once we did that, we were able to build up mom's confidence and we brought them back into the same room.

And what happened was both twins started sleeping through the night in the same room. The mom told me that she couldn't believe she had spent six months separating them when all she needed to do was teach them how to sleep. And that's exactly it. Separation isn't the solution. Teaching them how to sleep is.

I hope you found this video helpful and I hope that it built your confidence to know that your twins can sleep through the night in the same room. Inside the Twin Sleep Academy, I walk you through step by step exactly how to do this based on your twin's age, temperament, and parenting style. this is not just leave your twins to figure it out on their own.

Not only do my families get access to my step-by-step videos and workbooks,

But I know that what every twin parent needs is encouragement and support from somebody who really understands them.

and I meet twice a month and I answer their questions in my private Facebook group. And that's all at a fraction of the cost of a regular twin sleep consultant. This isn't just like a pile of PDFs and videos and I say, luck, I actually am a real person and a fellow twin mom that is here to support all my clients. And if that sounds like a

program that you want to be part of.

and you are actually ready to start sleeping, head over to twinsleep.com and learn more about the Twin Sleep Academy. We would love to have you. Again, make sure you like, subscribe, comment below, and leave a review if you're listening on Spotify or Apple. Make sure you share this video with a twin mom who needs to hear this.

Thanks for joining me today.

Be sure to check out the Twin Sleep Academy HERE