Dear Sleep, Don't Go.
The final stretch of pregnancy is a cruel dump of cold, harsh reality over your head. Soaking in while you lie there in bed wishing you'd just fall asleep and stay that way for a few hours.
After a day of dragging my belly around IKEA with Mark getting a few pieces for the apartment and things for the baby's room we came home to crown heights and around 11:30PM I finally felt more than just exhausted I felt sleepy. I took my heavy eyelids to bed ready for some good Saturday night sleep. You know that sleep is really real because there's no work in the morning yet you're semi rested or at least satisfied with your day because you spent it not behind a desk.
But instead of drifting into slumber, I spend at least an hour fighting indigestion.
I sit propped up hoping everything will move down and this miserable feeling that a cheeseburger is stuck in my esophagus will pass. Eventually I slink down into the covers on my side. Prop one leg on top of the other with the help of a memory foam pillow (helps with that God forsaken pelvic pain I warned y'all about before) and my eyes finally close.
But not for long. Precisely an hour later I'm startled awake by the need to pee, made much more dramatic than necessary by my munchkin doing a somersault off my bladder.
And now I'm awake and aware of my late night hunger. So here I am on the couch at 4:05 AM having a bowl of Cheerios and reading a few pages of a new book I grabbed recently.
This is not how I planned for things to go. I was looking forward to a good night of sleep to feel well rested and get out of bed at a decent hour and make great use of my Sunday by cleaning and organizing the house.
But alas, here I am not sleeping and no longer sleepy thanks to my body.
I guess it's only fitting that with just 7 weeks until my due date that my body is training me to live on borrowed pockets of shut eye. It's preparing me for not just feeding myself at 4AM but also our little human. It's breaking me out of that expectation that I'll be watching the back of my eyelids within moments of climbing into the covers.
"Dear sleep, why do you evade me?" I cry.
And I hear a whisper "Cuz you're about to be a mom, see you in 18 years, bye!"
