Exhaustion

I just read the word "asteroid," as "a steroid." I'm officially exhausted. I've done this before, read easy words wrong, (I once read "nicotine" as "nye-so-tine," and it took me a good ten minutes to figure out what the heck it was talking about.)

You see, I don't sleep anymore. Once pregnant, you're advised not to sleep on your stomach at all, and to sleep on your back in the first and second trimester only. So once the third tri rolls around, you're down to sleeping on either side. Sounds simple and kinda easy, but it's really not. When you're restricted on how you can sleep, it makes you crave the way you can't sleep even more, (like when you try to restrict yourself of certain foods.) Not to mention rolling over is very difficult at this point in the pregnancy, so that really doesn't help any.

So here is how a typical night goes for this pregnant woman:

• I go to sleep on my left side, feeling fine because the husband rubs my back until I'm out.

• An hour or two later I need to roll to the right side, so I have to slowly sit myself up, (aching muscles and a big belly makes this difficult,) and then I'm able to shift to the right.

• Soon after shifting, I realize I really gotta go to the bathroom! I spend a minute or two getting myself out of bed, and then waddle across the bedroom, through the kitchen, and down the hall to the bathroom. I do what I gotta do, and then make my way back to bed.

• Once back in bed, it takes a few minutes figuring out which side will feel best to sleep on. I decide on a side and start to drift off.

• Soon after drifting, I wake up once again. This time it's because my upper back and chest are both aching and make it very painful to move, and I can feel a charlie horse starting. Most of the time I'm able to stop the charlie horse, but once in a while it attacks me, causing me to squeal in pain, waking Shane up, who then has to massage to calves until the pain stops. Once it's gone, I go back down to my left side and decide to just deal with the pain until morning, (which at this point isn't very far away.)

• I wake up one more time, but this time not from the pain, it's to check on the baby. I usually sit up and feel for movement, it usually takes about 10 minutes to get her to move for me, but once she does, I'm able to relax and I doze off one final time.

• Before I know it, my alarm is going off at 6am and I'm in tears because I feel like I haven't slept at all.

I really have a hard time believing I'll sleep even less once the baby is here. At least when she's here, it'll take 10 seconds to check on her, not 10 minutes. I'll be waking up just as much as I do now to feed/comfort her, so that won't change. I also won't have to wake up at 6am anymore and work during the day, so I'll be able to take little naps when baby does.

I'm ready for her to be here. Seriously. This girl is tired.