This is a fact. Twins have absolutely NO need for personal space, especially when sleeping.
I mentioned before that our twin boys were born 8 weeks early, and spent a month in the NICU after birth. One of the highlights of the time they spent there was the day that they were finally moved from separate isolettes into the same one. It had been a goal of the doctors for some time to get them together, because they know that them being in close physical proximity brings MAJOR health benefits, and they boys needed it so much then.
Even when we brought them home from the hospital, and for several months after, our boys shared a bed. Many twin parents we consulted said they would sleep better and, though this eventually wasn’t the case for our boys as they grew (more on twins and sleeping later), they did share a crib for much of their infancy, and then moved to end-to-end cribs in the same room.
Once we moved Brady and Hayden out of cribs and into a bed, it only made sense that we move them into the strange, built-in full-size bed that was already in their room. From this point, around age 2, until age 5, our boys shared a bed yet again.
Now, our boys are true boys, in every sense of the word. They are rough. They are physical. And they always have each other to immediately engage with (which in turn leads to constant physical activity). But, as rough and tumble as these boys were from dawn to dusk, something magical happened almost every night they shared the same bed. Before we went to bed each night, Justin and I went into their rooms to tuck them in, and we would almost always find these two intertwined in bed, as close as they were as infants in the their NICU isolette.
Now age 6, the boys have moved on to bunk beds in their shared room, so it’s more rare to catch them all snuggled up, but it does still happen. I am not a twin myself, so I will never fully understand the depth of the twin bond. That being said, I have now had the chance to experience parenting twins, and there is no doubt that physical proximity comes with an innate richness for twins. As much as my boys constantly bother each other during every minute of the day, they are never bothered by physical closeness with one another. One’s personal space in slumber is clearly the other’s as well.
