My ex-husband is the sperm donor for my girlfriend, and we all live together in the same house. Here's how we make it work.

• When my husband and I split, we decided to keep living together so we could coparent.
• I started exploring my sexuality and met my girlfriend, who moved into the house with us.

People often wonder how I ended up living with my ex-husband, our two kids, and my pregnant girlfriend — all under one roof. Honestly, the answer is pretty simple: Life is just more manageable this way.

Christopher never moved out when we separated almost three years ago, and he even stayed when my girlfriend, Maddy, moved in. He's now the sperm donor for Maddy's baby, and we're all figuring out the right dynamics that feel authentic to us.

After 6 years of marriage with Christopher and 2 kids later, I realized I was gay

Like most marriages after kids, we struggled and constantly adjusted our lives to new nap schedules, dirty diapers, and bedtime routines. We worked together well, but there was just one part of our relationship that always fell flat: intimacy.

In 2020, I realized I wanted to date women and explore my sexuality, so Christopher and I decided to romantically separate. We are technically still married. But when we split, it felt like we were labeling what we were already practicing: two best friends loving and raising our children under one roof. Traditionally, when couples split, you sign the divorce papers, you split assets, you divide weekends, and someone moves out. That just didn't feel right for us.

Raising our kids together wasn't our problem; we rarely fought. Our home life was happy, and most importantly, our kids were happy. We each had our roles in the house, which were divided equally. So it was easy to decide to keep living together, especially because we could both be present in our kids' lives daily.

Thankfully, our house is big enough that Christopher moved into his own room, and we now have a split floor plan. For months, we took turns waking up with the kids, sharing the chores, and alternating when we'd go out on dates. Now that the pressure of our relationship — and being intimate — was off the table, we could be friends.

In those first couple of months after splitting, we spoke more openly about our feelings than we did over our whole marriage. There were good days and bad, but we had to keep our goal in mind. We wanted to get through this so we could do the thing no one thought we could do — and we did.

Then I met and fell madly in love with Maddy

I met Maddy on a dating app called Her. When I came across her profile, I was attracted to her androgynous look and quickly swiped right. We were inseparable after our first date. After two weeks of dinners and dates, I didn't want to spend any more time away from my kids, so we decided as a family it was time for her to meet everyone.

I'll never forget the first time Christopher and Maddy met. Moments before she arrived, Christopher said to me, "I'm so nervous. I hope she likes me." Funnily enough, Maddy said the same thing to me right before meeting him. They both sat on the couch talking like they were old friends, and my son, who is usually slow to warm up to new people, was all over her. It just felt right.

From that moment on, I fantasized about the day we would all live together, and six months later, it happened.

The great thing about having 3 adults in the house is that you have more hands, more eyes, and more ears to help with the kids and chores

When we all sit down for dinner together, it feels like a village — the one people always talk about, the one they say it takes to raise kids.

The three of us divide and tackle each day. We rely heavily on our joint Google calendar to keep everything in check. You could best describe us as a wrestling tag team. We tap out when we are feeling parental burnout and tap back in when we see our teammates struggling. At the end of the day, we all have the same goal in mind: survive until bedtime.

Outside our coparenting roles, we are genuinely friends. We work out together and even grab dinner or lunch — depending on the babysitter's availability. We know how important it is to see each other as individuals outside the home.

Maddy and I then asked Christopher to be the sperm donor for Maddy's baby

He said yes. We say "donor" because of the process, but Christopher will be the father of the baby.

Having Christopher as the donor for my girlfriend's baby just felt like the most logical choice. We all plan on being in each other's lives forever anyway, so we might as well continue what's already working for us: coparenting as a family.

Christopher is very supportive of my pregnant girlfriend. He steps up and manages the kid chaos alone on the weekends so we can put Maddy's needs first. He treats her with the same love, respect, and compassion he shows me, the mother of his children.

We are a team, and that team is about to grow. Maddy is due in May.

I'm so proud of where we are and how far we've come, and it's helped us all to have a little more freedom and balance in life.