Monday, August 23, 2010

forget "love" - the song *should* be: "SLEEP is a battlefield"

i think it's getting to the point where i should pretty much give up any hope of getting a full-night's rest until well after this child has been born (i'm guessing about 6 months from that exciting day, maybe he/she will be successfully sleeping through the night?)

considering i don't have to work, it's not so bad - i try to get up with ben (at about 6 a.m.) and eat breakfast with him before he does his daily 45 minute commute to work, and after he leaves, if the dog (ben's parents', not ours, we still only have the cat) hasn't been walked yet, i try to remember to do that, too, but then usually i go back to sleep and don't wake up till 9:30-ish or so...

yesterday night i was wide awake until about 1 a.m. - it didn't help that it's been muggy and hot, and we can either keep our bedroom door closed so that the cat doesn't get in, but then the air conditioning doesn't flow through to keep the room cooler, or we open the door to get the air flow, and have to keep kicking the cat off the bed all night. oy.

and last night, i couldn't fall asleep because for the life of me, i couldn't remember the name of the jewish director with those overly-sized dark rimmed glasses, who's famous for his quirky movies and married the adopted daughter of his previous wife. and it was driving me nuts - you know the feeling, when you know you know something (a name, date, place, etc.), but it's escaped you, and all you can remember is everything about it, but not that one little detail that is the thing itself - it's so entirely aggravating. so after half an hour? an hour? of trying to remember his name, and then trying to ignore the aggravation of not being able to come up with it, i finally tip-toed over to ben's side of the bed to get the computer and look it up. woody allen. duh! now i could finally put my thoughts at ease and fall asleep.

until a few hours later when i woke up feeling like i was in, wait, strike that, feeling like i was a sauna located at the center of a volcano - i've stopped even using sheets or blankets, i'm just so warm all the time - but i was sweltering so intensely that i thought i was going to be ill and that i might have to go for a ride on the porcelain bus. so at about 2 a.m. i took a cold shower, and thankfully, that did the trick. i was cool as a cucumber, and not one bit nauseous.

even when katrina feels my belly, she always comments how warm it is. i'm starting to actually believe that i might be a furnace. can anyone find my thermostat? i'd like to be turned down, please.

so simply being overly hot and without much to remedy the situation keeps me tossing and turning.

but then there's this huge bulge attached to my abdomen where there's this little person forming inside who, most nights, likes to become most active when i'm trying to be least active - in all manners, not just physically, but mentally, consciously, etc... plus it gets in the way. i used to be an expert belly sleeper. i can still find a decently comfortable position from time to time, kind of angled up and surrounded by pillows. however it usually doesn't take long before one of my arms or legs starts to feel tingly and cut off, or my back starts to ache, or my side is no longer comfortable from the weight, and i need to flip over to the other side. which - no joke - takes a good minute or two to get resituated, what with all the pillows and beach-ball-belly to contend with.

and there's also the fact that my bladder's reserve space is becoming more and more restricted. a small glass of water before i go to bed will easily have me up at least twice at some inconvenient hour in the middle of the night - and that's in addition to the three or four other times i get up for whatever liquids i consumed prior to that goodnight-glass of water...

so i've started taking my fish oil and prenatal vitamins around dinner time, and i try not to drink anything past 7 (which will usually still have me waking up once or twice in the middle of the night), but then i get so very thirsty, and sometimes that parched pucker will keep me more awake than the brimming bladder. it's a delicate dance, to be sure.

i also haven't been exercising like i was back in wyoming - we had a membership to the local rec center, and i would try to get there a couple of times a week and between my warm up/cool down on the track and the half-hour i spent on the elliptical, i'd get in about 3 miles each time i went. i had heard that exercise - aside from being really good for me and baby - could also help me sleep better at night. i'm not sure if it did, but i'd like to think it did. however, with how hot and muggy it's been here lately, and with my feet morphing into full-time puffer-fish, the idea of walking three miles in heavy sneakers that barely even fit (i think the laces are about as extended as the shoe will allow) has no appeal to me whatsoever, and i haven't even bothered to think about what it would take to muster up the discipline to do so.

but even if i did start getting in 3 miles a day a couple of times a week, i'm not sure that it would help the sleeping. (i should get back with this, simply for the health benefits, but we'll see how it goes - maybe i'll try on ben's tennis shoes, and go from there...)

i didn't get up with ben this morning, although i was awake, but between two in a row of really horrible unable-to-sleep nights, the thought of getting out of bed and climbing up those stairs and sitting in a chair felt comparable to climbing mount kilimanjaro.

but of course, all i did was toss and turn, and i figured i might as well stay awake and start the day (although by this time, ben had already left, and the dog has probably been walked - so here i am, not complaining, mind you, just documenting the pilgrimage of pregnancy), and i'm hoping maybe, just maybe, i'll be so tired tonight that i'll only wake up maybe once to visit my potty-friend for our late-night rendezvous, and other than that, "sleep like a baby?"

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