Kristen Bell’s daughters sleep in the same room with her and Dax, which smells bad

Kristen Bell is promoting her new Netflix series The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window. It’s next up in my queue of things to watch because I like a good parody. I’ve heard it takes some unexpected turns, as well, so I’m hopeful. I’m not hopeful for her promotional tour, though. In the comfort of her husband’s podcast, Armchair Expert, Kristen decided to talk about her kids and nasty smells in the bedroom. Much like her new series, this story took an unexpected turn. Kristen started by telling the listeners that their two daughters, Delta, seven, and Lincoln, eight, sleep in their bedroom. One day, a horrible smell began to infiltrate the room. Of course, we assume this links back to their lack of bathing practices. But that wasn’t it. The family thought it was excessive gas. The punchline, it turned out, was that Dax had filled their water mattress pad with a protein shake and it had rotted. What the what?!

Kristen Bell shared another odd detail about her and husband Dax Shepard’s marriage – they allow daughters Lincoln, 8, and Delta, 7, to sleep in their bedroom.

“In our bedroom, you know, the girls sleep on the floor of our bedroom,” Bell, 41, revealed during the latest episode of Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast.
Bell made the revelation after explaining to listeners that she started to “smell a really raunchy smell” in their room a few nights ago.

“I’m like, ‘Who’s farting?’ All three of them are like, ‘Sorry, it’s me,’” she recalled. “So I go, ‘OK, my family has gas, big [deal].’ I wake up in the morning and I go, ‘Wow, nobody’s gas has dissipated, but it also smells like it’s burning.’”

When the “rotten, burning garbage”-like smell didn’t go away, Bell said she washed all of the sheets, opened the room’s French doors and even lit some candles, but nothing seemed to do the trick.

“Now, Delta, the little one, she is smell sensitive,” Bell said of her youngest daughter. “So she goes, ‘You know what, I do smell it.’ Lincoln and Dax can’t be bothered, so Delta and I are, well, being gaslit.”

Shepard, 47, then chimed in, telling fans that he asked his daughters to check the room for dog poo, to no avail. Bell eventually asked Lincoln to help her get to the bottom of it.

“I lean down and smell the mattress, Dax’s corner, his feet corner of the mattress, and I almost hit the deck. I almost passed out it was so strong,” Bell said, revealing that her husband accidentally filled their OOLER mattress pad with an old protein shake, instead of water.

“So I take it off, I put it in the tub, I try to drain the water out of it, that doesn’t really work. Dax takes it downstairs and hooks up the power washer to it to push everything out of the tubes.”

Basically, “don’t put a protein shake in your OOLER,” Bell advised.

[From Page Six]

If, like me, you were wondering what the hell an OOLER mattress pad is, it’s a $1500 water based, temperature control pad used for perfect sleep. I started this story thinking ‘what fancy rich person crap is this’? and now I’m looking around for something to sell so I can have one. However, the question remains – who fills it with a protein shake?! I assume the water required to fill the pad must be filtered or clarified or blessed by butterflies from Argentina or something but still, how similar can those bottles be? I can understand why it took so long for Kristen to identify the smell, because who would think their mattress was rotting from the inside? The power washer was a good idea, but my money is on they had to get a new pad. You can’t ever get rid of a smell like that. I hate that I can taste this story on the roof of my mouth.

Most outlets are focusing on the fact that Delta and Lincoln sleep with the couple in their room. Two years ago, Kristen said the girls shared a bedroom in the hope that they would build character. She told SELF, “I think their lives will be easier than most other people’s on the planet, and to develop a good character, it’s important to always be going through something.” Her logic was that the girls could negotiate figuring out how to share a space together as their challenge. To Kristen’s credit, she acknowledged if that was the worst thing that happened to them, they were pretty well off. I don’t know how sleeping in their parent’s room factors into the whole character-building plan. I assume that’s why they’re on the floor and not on the bed. But I think we’re supposed to be asking more outrageous questions like, how do you guys have sex? I’m still struggling with the rotten shake for a bed, though. I don’t want to think of anyone having sex in that room.


Photo credit Instagram, InStar Images and Backgrid

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

63 Responses to “Kristen Bell’s daughters sleep in the same room with her and Dax, which smells bad”

Comments are Closed

We close comments on older posts to fight comment spam.

  1. Jillian says:

    Dax Shepard seems completely insufferable on every level

  2. Dss says:

    The bigger question is -what drugs Dax is on that he would fill a mattress with a protein shake. That makes no sense whatsoever

    • Jessica says:

      Seriously! what the hell?

    • Escargot says:

      Seriouslyyyyyy. Was he drunk or high or what?

      • Zoro says:

        Honestly, I kind of don’t believe this story. I just don’t think it’s possible to “accidentally” fill a mattress (or anything, for that matter) with a protein shake instead of the required water. On the other hand, not sure if it’s possible to fabricate a story like this, so maybe it did happen.

      • Wiglet Watcher says:

        I don’t believe it either. It’s a deliver act to get the powder or mix in there. Maybe he fell off the wagon recently?

        Anyone every have a protein shake at the gym and leave the empty or half full bottle in their car/gym bag/ room temp? It BLOATS! The top might pop off from pressure. The smell is horrendous. That mattress would have started to feel different.

        This is just more BS to grab headlines.

    • Sushiroll says:

      All I can think of is that the distilled water it’s supposed to be filled with and the protein shake are both packaged in similar opaque bottles.

      Then the heat from the bed “cooked” the protein shake into a disgusting mess that no one needed nor wanted to learn about.

      They really gross me out now, thanks to their oversharing 🤢

    • Tanya says:

      No way he did it. The machine would definitely malfunction.

  3. Kcat says:

    I’ve been eying the Ooler thing as I’ve started to get night sweats from peri menopause. They’re infrequent still, so I’ll probably wait to make sure nothing “pcooler comes on the market. Ha.

    • Bella says:

      Try wearing loose fitting workout clothes to bed. It helps wick away the sweat so sleeping is a little easier. It has helped me somewhat, except when it’s just so bad my temperature must be in the 100s

    • Kristin says:

      Ugh, I have terrible endometriosis and since I can’t have children I went ahead and had a hysterectomy a couple months ago. I was okay for the first month but then got hit by full-on menopause in month two. The whole night sweats and just sitting around and all of a sudden your temperature flares up like 10 degrees, lol. I’m on estrogen now and it’s starting to get better, but damn. Menopause seriously sucks!

      • BothSidesNow says:

        I’m so sorry. I went through the same thing, as having to make the decision to have a hysterectomy and the sudden onset of menopause. I froze the family! They also didn’t give me any estrogen too! Plus we lived in Houston which is similar to living on the surface of the sun, no less. Our electric bills were through the roof too!! I would get up and put my face in the freezer as well.

    • Sarah says:

      I’ve started wearing bamboo PJs from Yala and This is J and they have made a huge difference. I don’t get near as sweaty as I did before.

    • Dotgirl says:

      I swear by Uniqlo Airism shirts/shorts for sleeping when it’s too hot. Now that I’m starting to get night sweats occasionally (thanks, aging), they’ve been even more useful, plus they aren’t crazy expensive.

  4. Chaine says:

    I call BS. I have one of those cooling pads, and you use distilled water. The water goes into a temp regulating unit, which heats or cools it and then routes it thru very tiny conduits to the pad. I don’t really see how you could confuse anything else for distilled water, and I would be shocked that anything that wasn’t pure liquid would get out of the conduits from the regulating unit without gunking up the system and breaking it. If he put a protein shake in it he must have been really really high. BTW yes it’s an expensive system but it’s been a life saver in menopause because I’m not overheating and waking up sweaty 85 times a night any more. Well worth the money.

    • purdueswim says:

      We have one too, and it’s amazing. I haven’t hit menopause yet (getting there though!), but we live in Taiwan where it is bloody hot most of the year. The a/c in our building is bad, the lowest we can typically get a room is 19C (the kitchen for some reason), and our bedroom is typically between 22-25C. Way too hot, especially when in summer it gets to 38C with 100% humidity and higher. I have slept so much better since getting one, well worth the money.

  5. OriginalLaLa says:

    This sounds either totally made up for attention, or something is going on with Dax. Water and a shake are not easily confusable.

  6. SJP-NYC says:

    I want an Ooler now, not because of these idiots, but sounds fab.

    • NegativityBias says:

      …and therein lies the point of the whole story. A weird endorsement, to be sure, but I bet it had readers googling.

  7. BeyondTheFringe says:

    No. Nope. No way. I’m not buying what she’s selling. I don’t believe it for one second.

    Something about her story stinks.

    Hey-OHHHHHH!!!!

  8. Joan Callamezzo says:

    Hecate you’re gonna give us some affordable Ooler Amazon options right? Some of us perimenopause girls are intrigued…

  9. girl_ninja says:

    For all the protection Bell and Shepard give their daughters, they do share a LOT of personal stories about them. They will grow up and they will read all this s**t and so will their little friends.

    • Fleur says:

      Yes, thank you! I don’t understand how they can say they want to protect their children from the public eye (as well they should!), but then share story after story of these children for the whole world to forever document and consume. Protecting their children should include a moratorium on all information, not solely photos. Kutcher/Kunis does this too. It seems incredibly invasive and hypocritical to use your kid as a means for press or a talk show talking point

  10. Escargot says:

    Why does she insist on sharing the disgusting details of her life with the world?
    And can you even imagine how much more filthy and gross these people would be if they weren’t millionaires? They have all the money to afford all the help in the world and they are STILL seven shades of nasty.
    For some reason Kristen and Dax are comfortable giving up all dignity and self respect in exchange for constant attention. But her daughters have not made that gross choice in life. Maybe her daughters want to have a shred of dignity, and don’t care about the constant attention of strangers? Does she ever consider that? Nope.

    • Cava 24 says:

      I think it is t over sharing so much as making stuff up. We’ve reached a point where most celebrities who communicate with their audiences directly are totally performative and fake about it. It’s like they had a quality that people liked when they started out (generally candor) that gets monetized and is totally artificial. They become a cartoon version of whatever people liked about them.

  11. North+of+Boston says:

    I didn’t always feel this way about them, but in the last few years, they seem like a couple who, if they were in your friend circle and were invited to gatherings … cookouts, birthday parties, Super Bowl parties, one or both of them would manage to act out in a way that would make other guests super uncomfortable and drag proceedings to a halt.

    Whether it would be talking too loudly about personal things, doing that thing where one tells anecdotes about their partner in a way that is passive-aggressive trash talking, policing one another’s behavior in a way that calls attention to them, accidentally on purpose hip checking someone into the pool or knocking over the buffet table or unexpectedly having a blow-out couples’ fight, it would be a giant record scratch. They wouldn’t do it every time, and you wouldn’t see it coming, but it’d be like having a Gremlin there … you’d never know if someone fed it while you weren’t looking but bad vibes and chaos would erupt.

    • Layla Beans says:

      They are Michael and Jan from The Office. See: The Dinner Party.

      • Kebbie says:

        Lol I literally just watched that episode this morning while I was doing laundry. So good. Dax and Kristen are 100% the couple who bring their arguments to dinner parties and try to get their friends to take sides.

      • North of Boston says:

        Thank you! That’s it, that’s the energy they give out these days.

      • RoyalAssassin says:

        Please! We LOVED Michael and Jan! These two…not so much…

    • kgeo says:

      Ooh, we have a passive aggressive trash talking friend couple.

  12. FHMom says:

    I wouldn’t judge them for that. I swore up and down I wound never sleep with my child. Then baby number one comes along and is the worst sleeper ever. We couldnt get her to sleep in her crib despite trying everything. When I got pregnant with number 2, I needed my sleep. We put her in bed with us and it was like magic. Shes 19 now and won’t let me in her room. It all works out.

    • Helonearth says:

      But were they still sleeping in your room when they were 7-8 years old?

      • Mcali says:

        Who cares if kids sleep in their parents room? They eventually grow out of it. Not that it’s anyone’s business…

      • Nicole says:

        My 7yo still sleeps with me *shrug* It is apparent that he still needs the security of his parents. Imagine being 5 yo when a worldwide pandemic hit and your world got turned upside down. He will grow out of it eventually and want his own space and privacy. I’m not worried.

      • FHMom says:

        To answer your question, my kids eventually got their own rooms. I slept with my oldest in her room until she was about 7? The other one needed someone to lie down with her in her bed, but she would sleep all night after that.

      • Jesma says:

        I still let my 9 and 11 year old sleep in my bed whenever they want. Which is often.

      • I'm With The Band says:

        My 7-year old also sleeps with me. I even put a mattress on the floor of his room so I could sleep without getting rolled on and face planted with his feet. It’s simply about security for him too, and I know he’ll grow out of it one-day, so it doesn’t bother me. I used to regularly drag my doona and pillow to my mum’s room in the middle of the night and sleep at the foot of her bed. It was simply a comfort thing.

  13. Twin Falls says:

    I have no issue with parents and kids co-sleeping. The oversharing on the other hand…

  14. Tempest says:

    I don’t see a problem with the co-sleeping. The rest of her story is hard to believe.

  15. Terri+J+Neff says:

    Sometimes kids just decide they are sleeping with you. My son was doing it so often that we too put him on the floor in Hope’s of making his room seem like the better option. It didnt work.

  16. faithmobile says:

    Everything but the shared bedroom sounds made up. We cosleep and you can have sex when the kids are at school or in our house we get creative like using the basement or the potting shed when the kids are home. This idea that there is only one way to sleep is so unhealthy, kids should feel safe when they sleep. Both my kids have their own rooms now and are great sleepers and very independent and I think it’s because we didn’t push them to be independent when they were little.

    • aang says:

      Same in our house. We had a room with a family bed that was usually me and the kids, my kids each have their own room, and my husband has his own room. So plenty of places for sleep and or other things. My daughter slept with me until she was 12.

    • Nicole says:

      Yes!!! I don’t think after what we’ve been through the last 2 years anyone should be judging parents for providing additional security for kids that might otherwise be “too old”. The world has been really scary. My oldest has friends that have lost parents. I can’t imagine living with that anxiety at his age.

  17. Merricat says:

    We were co-sleepers and while opportunities for sex were sometimes catch-as-catch-can, and definitely required some inventiveness and imagination, we always managed.

  18. SNF says:

    This sounds fake. I wonder if it’s a low-key mattress sponsorship

    • Kebbie says:

      This is just about the only thing that makes sense.

      How much water goes into these things? How many protein shake bottles did he empty into it? It doesn’t make any sense that you could make a mistake like that. It must be some kind of bizarre story they cooked up to name drop the product.

  19. Miss Margo says:

    You have to be another level of stupid to fill something that like with a protein shake.

  20. Red Weather Tiger says:

    Does she think these moronic stories are endearing? I just can’t with these weird, stinky, rich people. I pity those two children.

    • Sushiroll says:

      She seems to constantly need to remind the public – in disgusting detail – that her family smells. It’s extremely off-putting.

  21. Jules says:

    They just proved again that they exaggerate and make shit up, trying to be funny. It’s all about external validation, some people really have no sense of self without a following and constant attention from others.

  22. MarcelMarcel says:

    I’m so confused and grossed out. I hope this story ends with them replacing their water bed.

    Also I hope their daughters at least have some of cozy set up on the floor with a mattress or something? Idk. If your encourage your children to sleep with you every night and force them to endure the strange smells… the least you can do is provide them with proper orthopaedic support.

  23. mkat says:

    Our rule with our two kids was that they had to go to bed in their own beds, but if they woke up in the night and wanted to sleep in our room, they could do so as long as they slept on the floor and did not wake us up in the process of building their floor “nest”. We just had to be careful nearly every morning when we got up not to step on them. Everyone seemed happy with the arrangement.

    • Kate says:

      hahahaha the “floor nest” – glad to know my kids aren’t the only ones who do this. We have portable foam floorbeds from amazon we set up either for sleepovers in the other kid’s room or in our bedroom if they want to sleep with us and they always have to arrange 75 blankets and stuffies in them *just so* before going to bed

  24. Jais says:

    My initial reaction when I see a story about these two is please just stop talking. But you know what people can overshare gross details about their family as much as they want. I think I’m just done reading about it.

  25. Cessily says:

    She and Mila Kunis need to drop the “Bad Moms” theme and save it for the movies or tv shows.

  26. JRenee says:

    I binge watched the series this past weekend. I’ll wait for a thread on the series so as not to spoil anything. I will say her acting was better than expected.

  27. Seraphina says:

    Best part of this article:
    I started this story thinking ‘what fancy rich person crap is this’? and now I’m looking around for something to sell so I can have one.

  28. Anna says:

    Our 4yo sleeps with us. She goes to sleep at 8. There is a couch in living room. Go figure! It’s hard to believe so many people have sex only in bed at night.

    • JanetDR says:

      Haha! Just what I was thinking. A family bed is a normal thing for most people at least some of the time – they just don’t brag about it.
      You know what is so sad about the last time your kids sleep with you? You don’t know it’s the last time and don’t savor those snuggles enough.

  29. AnneL says:

    Yeah, I can relate to the kids wanting to sleep with you. It was kind of a struggle for us. We played a lot of musical beds and often ended up with both in there with us by morning. It wasn’t that I minded them sleeping with me, more that I thought it was better for them to learn to sleep by themselves. My kids are in their twenties now, things have changed. But after all that they both turned out to be total champs at sleeping alone. They grow out of it. I needn’t have worried.

    Gross about the protein shake thing, though. Wow.