Week 8: The Sandman Abandons Me

While I may occasionally question my skills as a wife, a friend, and a writer, there’s one area in which I’ve never doubted my abilities: sleep. I am a good sleeper. Great, in fact. I’d even go so far as to say that if sleeping were an Olympic sport, I’d be a gold medalist. I regularly get 8, 9 hours a night. On weekends, I can easily snooze for 10 or 11. My sleep is deep and dreamless, rarely interrupted by bothersome noises or worries. That is, until I became pregnant.

I was horrified to find myself wide awake at the ungodly hour of 4:30 a.m. this morning. The house was dark, cold, and quiet, save for my husband’s peaceful breathing. The jerk. Behind the window shades, I could still see streetlights. No one was up except paperboys and long-distance truckers. And maybe not even them. As the minutes ticked by with agonizing sluggishness, I lay in bed, miserable. Until I had to go use the bathroom – a now nightly occurrence.

How I yearn for the peaceful slumber of pre-pregnancy. I love my bed almost as much as my husband. Truth be told, I miss it more than him when I’m away from home. The bed’s crowning glory is a queen-sized, European pillow-top mattress with just a hint of firmness. It’s covered by high thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets, a cozy quilt, and lots of feather pillows. In the winter, a fluffy duvet envelops me in soft warmth. I could stay in my bed all day. That is, until I got pregnant.

My bed is no longer my haven. Now I can no longer sleep on my stomach because my swollen chest hurts too much. Lying on my back for some reason makes me have to get up to go to the bathroom more often. If I lie on my right side, my husband’s hot breath hits me square in the face. So the only remaining position is on my left side, facing the unrelenting glare of the alarm clock. I’ve started covering it with my lavender eye pillow. Might as well use it for something, now that it no longer does the trick when it comes to soothing me to sleep.

So, here I am at 9:45 a.m., already exhausted. Only seven more months to go ... until I get even less sleep. Sigh.