As the debate about co-sleeping continues, another mother has spoken out about her family’s sleeping arrangements.

Charlotte Lewis, 33, and her husband Paul, 34, sleep with their 8-year-old daughter Izzie and 4-year-old son Harvey every night.

“Haters are going to hate, but sleepers are going to sleep!” Charlotte told South West News Service.

Their eldest, Izzie, had struggled to sleep on her own since she was an underweight newborn.

Born two weeks overdue and only weighing 5 pounds, 9 ounces, doctors warned the new parents that if their baby had been just 1-ounce lighter, she would have been in the ICU.

The parents were on a mission to help Izzie gain weight and had to feed her every two hours around the clock for the first three months, which disrupted her sleep from the very beginning.

“Right from the get-go, we disturbed her sleep. This was mistake No. 1,” Charlotte admitted. “Izzie is now a healthy and happy 8-year-old but had never slept through the night.”

In order for her to get shut-eye, the Lewis family now shares a giant bed, comprised of two double beds pushed together every night.

“Bedtime is no longer a battle but a joy,” Charlotte shared. “There’s no pleading for extra stories because they don’t want you to leave — we just enjoy the stories. They’re both safe and secure, and after eight years, we can finally close our eyes at night and say, ‘see you in the morning’ instead of ‘see you in an hour.’ “

However, the Lewis family has faced criticism from extended family and friends over their decision to co-sleep — but they simply don’t care if it’s helping their children.

“I wish we’d just done it years ago,” Charlotte insisted. “Why do we all naturally follow this ‘well this is what you “should” do’ rather than listen to what our child is saying and respond directly to that in any way that’s necessary?”

“Once we decided to go for it, I owned it and told everyone what we’d done. So many of my friends said they’d done the same or something similar but never told anyone for fear of judgment!”

The Lewis family is not alone in being criticized for co-sleeping after doctors have warned parents that the popular but controversial practice puts babies at a higher risk of suffocating.

Actress Alicia Silverstone, 45, recently brought the co-sleeping parenting debate into the headlines again when she admitted to sleeping with her 11-year-old son, Bear, every night.

The “Clueless” star spoke on “The Ellen Fisher Podcast” about her attachment parenting style, revealing, “Bear and I still sleep together.”

The actress, who shares the preteen with ex-husband Christopher Jarecki, joked that she would “get in trouble for” her comment.

“I don’t really care,” Silverstone said, laughing off possible critics.

Although she has always been very outspoken about her “alternative” and “natural” parenting choices, some experts warn against co-sleeping.

The American Academy of Pediatrics released updated guidelines last month for safe sleeping with infants and toddlers after multiple suffocation fatalities linked to the now-recalled Fisher-Price 4-in-1 Rock ‘n Glide Soothers.

Every year, according to the AAP’s new parental alert, approximately 3,500 infants die of sleep-related fatalities, including sudden infant death syndrome, known as SIDS.

Despite the warnings from experts, some parents continue to tout their choice to co-sleep with their children. In fact, a recent study found that 88% of parents of kids ages 1 to 10 prefer co-sleeping with their kids because they said it makes them feel closer to them.

But for the Lewis family, the benefits outweighed the risks, especially given she was underweight at birth.

“We were constantly told, ‘once she’s on solids, she’ll sleep. Once she’s crawling and moving, she’ll sleep. Once she’s in nursery [school], she’ll sleep. Once she’s in school full time, she’ll sleep,’ etcetera, but the sleep never came.”

At first, the family struggled to get Izzie to sleep through the night, trying everything to get their little girl to feel comfortable in her room and stay asleep.

“We tried her in her own room, we tried a bigger bed, we tried black-out curtains, we tried a different room — nothing worked,” Charlotte explained.

“As she grew up, she could voice why she didn’t want to be alone or why she was scared, so we tried all different ways to arrange her room to eliminate one fear at a time.”

The tired parents tried everything, including moving the bed away from the window, not having her head looking at the door, nothing hanging on the back of her door, a floor bed so nothing or no one could possibly be underneath, glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, different lamps and night lights, gentle music playing, every kind of lavender-scented sprays on her bed and teddy and natural herbal drops to encourage sleep.

“We tried only having toys downstairs, so her room was only for sleep. We then tried the total opposite to try to encourage her to enjoy being in her room playing during the day, so it would be more familiar during the night. It made no difference,” Charlotte said.

“You name it, we’d tried it.”

Finally in 2018, when their son Harvey was born, the family thought they found a solution.

The parents found that Izzie would wake in the night, drag her bedding into her baby brother’s room and sleep on the floor beside his cot, holding his hand.

Izzie finally seemed to have found some peace, so her parents decided to have the children share a room with their beds pushed up against each other. The new sleeping arrangement reduced how much Izzie was waking up by half, but was still unable to sleep through the night and would accidentally wake her brother.

Then in 2020, the family finally cracked the code while on vacation to the Isle of Wight.

During the trip, the family shared a room, and the parents noticed how excited Izzie was to have everyone sleeping together in one room.

“It was a large room, so she was a good distance away, but she still didn’t care. She was over the moon,” Charlotte recounted. “She was confident and excited and enjoyed setting up her bed with her things, putting her pajamas under her pillow and tucking her bunny in under the blanket.”

“It was like seeing another child come to life. She was so happy and she slept all through the night, every night!”

After their successful trip, Charlotte and Paul decided to move two mattresses into Izzie’s room for a family sleepover for a month trial period.

The experiment proved to be a success, with the family of four getting the best sleep they’d ever had at home. They made the sleeping arrangement their nightly routine, with every family member snoozing soundly through the night.

Charlotte also shared that the sleeping arrangements and full nights of sleep have improved “every aspect” of her daughter’s well-being.

However, the mother of two detests the harsh judgment that parents feel from others that stop them from sharing how they’re getting by.

“For us now, so long as we get the result we want, a good night’s sleep, then we’ve won,” she said.

“We haven’t given in, or given up. We won. Haters are going to hate, but sleepers are going to sleep!”