I remember the exact night my husband stopped sleeping with me. It was May 14, 2010. There are three reasons why.

Reason #1

Our infant, Charlotte, was two weeks old and wouldn't sleep through the night. Friends loaned us a beautiful, hand-crafted wooden crib from Germany, which I'd outfitted with a yellow, duck-themed fitted sheet. The fabric must have felt like a cold rock to my sweet baby, who screamed at the top of her newborn lungs as soon as her back touched it.

I nursed and rocked her each evening until she drifted into a deep, milk-filled sleep. Exhausted and ready to fall into my bed, I tiptoed to my bedroom and gently placed Charlotte into the crib, slipping my hands out from underneath her. The act disrupted her slumber and her eyelids flicked open instantly.

With my eyelids heavy and tears welling in desperation for sleep, I carried my bundle to my bed, removed the blankets and pillows, and placed her beside me. With the crook of my elbow supporting my head, Charlotte's warm body and soft breathing lulled me to sleep.

My husband, Andy, and I were both nervous about letting Charlotte sleep in our bed after learning about the danger of suffocation. Yet bedside sleepers (AKA bassinets) were expensive and I was falling apart at my new-mother seams. Worried about Charlotte rolling off our bed, I carefully positioned her next to me in the middle of the Queen-sized bed each night.

We didn't want another adult body potentially rolling on our baby and with the two of us cuddled in the middle, there was no room for Andy. Turns out this was ok with him.

Reason #2

Andy likes to sleep on the couch because he is paranoid.

When we first bought our house on a well-trafficked highway outside of our small, upstate New York town, we heard rumors that drugs used to be dealt at a house down the street. A few years after we moved in, several businesses in the area experienced break-ins. Andy purchased an alarm system and insisted we always lock our car doors.

He later outfitted our house with additional wireless cameras pointing in every direction, from the woods to the road. Neither a deer nor an Amazon driver could walk up to our home without his knowledge.

When our kids were toddlers, I couldn't wait to fall into bed after we read them stories, snuggled, and tucked them into their beds.

Andy, however, is a night owl. Between 8 p.m. and midnight, he sits at his laptop emailing coworkers, tinkering with the hot tub heating element (wearing a headlamp), and watching Giant, Killer Spider, and Sharknado movies on the SyFy channel.

Our front door opens right into the living room. Its soft, puffy couch became his bed while he served as the house's protective eyes and stayed up so late night after night.

Andy's desire to watch the front door and Charlotte's desire to sleep right next to me meant she and I co-slept for several months. That continued until the night, months later, when Charlotte, tucked into her sleep sack, closed her eyes in her nursery crib and slept for five full hours.

Five full hours! Andy and I felt like Julie Andrews dancing in the meadow on Mehlweg Mountain.

Reason #3

Sometime after my kids started sleeping in their own beds, I developed insomnia. My hormones and stress levels beat out nights of restful REM sleep. I interrupted many of Andy's Syfy movie nights by lumbering into the living room crying, asking him to rub my back to calm my fried, sleep-deprived nerves.

I tried everything under the stars to fall and stay asleep and settled on Melatonin. I'd get into bed very early, listening to ocean waves on my Alexa, and minimizing anything loud or stressful, which included Andy, Charlotte, and her older sister.

For over a year, the slightest noise could wake me and send me into a manic panic state, potentially creating a pattern of insomnia for weeks on end. The motto NOBODY WAKE UP MOM became our house rule and reinforced Andy's overnight couch time.

While my sleep hygiene system is working now and I generally enjoy 6 hours of interrupted sleep, the fear of insomnia looms large.

Finally Sharing a Bed

It was my idea to go to Sedona the week after Christmas this year and Andy was on board. When we told Charlotte our plan, she was adamant that she couldn't miss any of her J.V. volleyball games taking place during the holiday vacation week. Our eldest chimed in with, "I don't like to walk!"

It was settled. Nana agreed to stay at our house after Christmas and hang with the teenagers while we flew across the country to the desert for seven days, the longest time we'd ever spent away from our children.

Our Sedona hotel was clean and quiet, a mile away from downtown, with a heated pool that I would have jumped into if I'd remembered my swimsuit. We made ourselves at home, filling the mini-fridge with wine, beer, and leftovers and putting our clothes into the drawers.

We spent the days visiting wineries and galleries and hiking the red rocks that are other-worldly compared to the local lush greenery, pine tree-filled peaks, and rainbows of fall foliage.

We talked about the scenery, grumbled about the traffic, compared notes on our brunch selections, unpacked work woes, and asked one another if it was ok that we didn't miss the kids as much as we thought we would.

For the first time since having kids, we lived uninterrupted. No work phone calls and emails to answer, no groceries to buy, no sick children to pick up from school, no bills to pay, and no sidewalks to shovel. We had nothing to do but be there — together.

We returned to our hotel room each evening and climbed into our king-size bed, slipping under the clean, crisp white sheets. We ate Ghirardelli chocolate. Andy drank a beer or two and I sipped on a cheap mini-bottle of wine. I'd fall asleep with my phone on my chest, waking up to pee and panicking that it was dead until I realized Andy, who probably stayed up hours past me watching bad cable, plugged it in for me.

Some nights I'd wake up near the edge of the huge bed, forgetting another person was sleeping in the same room. On other nights I found myself curled up next to his back, soothed by the rise and fall of his rhythmic breathing and the warmth of his body against mine. I realized how safe it feels to sleep next to someone and how much I've missed it.

I will never sleep next to a newborn baby. I will never provide comfort and security to a person new to this world and me, but I can still share a bed with a person I love. I thought perhaps this trip of successful cosleeping might change our old habits and patterns. I hoped Andy felt the same way.

We walked into our house at 8 p.m. a week later. Exhausted, we caught up with our kids' volleyball games, recently acquired coughs, and Nana's love of leftover pizza.

Our suitcases lay by the stairs, untouched. We only emptied and put them away after we caught up on sleep that night — me in our queen bed and Andy on the soft, puffy, living room couch.

Old habits are hard to break.