Golde co-founders Trinity Mouzon Wofford and her husband, Issey Kobori, could never find a mattress firm enough for their taste. “Neither of us liked soft, plush sleeping situations, so over time in our relationship, whenever we needed to get a new mattress, we kept looking for firmer and firmer mattresses,” Mouzon Wofford says. Kobori eventually suggested a Japanese tatami mat, which he grew up sleeping on. Now, the couple and their two daughters all sleep together in a big family bed on the floor. Mouzon Wofford explains how they make it work.
On their journey to the tatami
When we moved into our current home in the Hudson Valley, that was when we got the tatami mats. Around the same time, we just found out we were having our first baby. So we had this sense of, Okay, how are we going to set ourselves up? Issey and I had both grown up sleeping in our parents’ beds as young kids, and it made sense to us. So the tatami-mat situation was easy because it lends itself to a more communal sleeping arrangement. Being up high on a bed gets a little more complicated and dangerous for really young kids. So what we did was we got the tatami mats and then we put our mattress on top — which I still love, by the way. It’s a Plank mattress. If you Google “the hardest mattress possible,” that’s what comes up.
So for the first couple of years, we just slept with the mattress on the tatami mats, but we kept saying one day we really wanted to get a real Japanese futon. We had to take our time because you have to order from Japan and it’s expensive. What spurred us to finally make the next upgrade was that we had another kid on the way, and we realized, Wait, we can’t fit four of us on this mattress. So we needed something a little more flexible. Just recently, we completed the setup with the futons that you just roll out. Issey got them from a website called Futon Tokyo that has been making futons for the past 100-plus years. You can order all kinds of Japanese bedding accessories from them.
On figuring out the family bed
Now, we have two double-size futons that we push together, and there’s enough space for everyone. When we wake up, we just roll them up and leave them on the side of the tatami mats. It’s a nice little morning ritual, and for the entire daytime, the room is fairly empty; there’s something sort of serene about that. We also have another futon that’s smaller that we roll out for our older daughter, Ruby, to nap on during the day.
At night before baby Maia came, I would be on one of the futons, Issey would be on the other, and Ruby would be sleeping between us. Maia is only a couple months old now, so we’re still in the thick of it. But what has ended up working so far is my husband and Ruby sleep on the futons on the tatami, and Maia and I sleep on our Plank mattress, which we haven’t gotten rid of yet, all in the same room. When Ruby was born, we bought a little crib mattress that’s made of a special super-breathable material so if the baby rolls over on their face, they won’t die. We’d initially planned to use it with Maia, but we put her down on the mattress and she was like, I’m not sleeping alone. The problem is that, when babies are super-new, it’s best for them to sleep on a fairly hard surface. The futon itself has a bit of give, like sleeping on a very thin pillow. But sleeping on the Plank together has worked well because it’s firm enough that she’s not going to suffocate in the cushioning.
I am definitely looking forward to when Maia’s a little older and we can all sleep on the futons together. It’ll probably be a while still before we can make the proper transition to the family bed, but right now it feels like our whole bedroom is just a giant family bed.
On the rest of their setup
Before we got the futons, I was really partial to sheets from Coyuchi. The first year I was able to start paying myself a salary from our business, nice bedding was a gift to myself. It was really game changing — I realized how worth it it is to make the investment and sleep on good sheets. Now, it’s a bit of a hodgepodge because we just got the futons, so we’re using the sheets we ordered with them because they have to be a certain size. All of our pillowcases are still Coyuchi, though.
I also sleep on a buckwheat pillow. Issey got it for himself and then I stole it from him. It’s generally very firm. It has a little bit of give because the pieces of buckwheat move around as you put your head down, but compared with a down-filled pillow that’s going to collapse underneath you, this has a lot more resistance and feels more solid. The first time you put your head on it, you’re kind of like, This is weird. It’s an extreme beanbag, basically. But now, I really can’t sleep without it.
I have an air purifier that also functions like a white-noise machine. I got it when we lived in Brooklyn because there’s just soot everywhere. It came in very handy when the wildfire smoke suddenly descended upon New York. I keep it at level two out of three, and that’s the perfect amount of white noise.
Now that we’re up here outside the city, I definitely like to sleep with the windows open. I like the air on my skin. I always have my windows open as much as I can. No eye masks or blackout curtains because I am very into getting into a natural rhythm with wake times. I just want to have a sense of what time it is and what’s going on.
On sleeping as peacefully as possible while nursing a newborn
Around eight o’clock, after dinner, I’ll go upstairs with Ruby to spend some time with her and get her to sleep. Maia is still very new, so her sleep is more all over the place; Issey and I usually hang out on the couch with her until we’re ready to go to sleep, around ten o’clock, and then we all go upstairs together.
The British brand Toast has these nightgowns that are very lightweight and comfortable. They’ve got enough of a button-down situation that I can nurse in them, which is really important. Your whole wardrobe basically has to switch over when you’re breastfeeding a newborn. They’re also very nice-looking — they just look like a housedress. In the morning, I can throw a sweater on top, and if I step outside for a moment, I feel a lot more together than if I were in sweatpants.
Maia will wake up a couple of times to nurse during the night. I nurse her while we’re in bed, then she goes back to sleep and that’s the whole thing. I never get up, turn the lights on, or check the time. I keep it pretty intuitive, and it works quite well.
On night poops
The one thing that’s tough with newborns is the night poops. Then you’re like, “Okay, let’s get up, let’s turn the lights on, let’s deal with this.” But Issey handles those since I’m doing the nursing. We’ve been switching out a lot of the lightbulbs throughout the house; they’re really low wattage, very warm-colored light, so that when a light does turn on, it doesn’t blind you.
We use Coterie diapers, and those are by far the best. That’s a big recommendation from me for sleeping successfully with children: Get them in a good diaper so you’re not constantly changing blowouts at two o’clock in the morning.
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