All the Horrible Girliness

Waking up is the worst. Seems that's all I ever do. I read in a pregnancy magazine that during the third trimester, the night feels like one long sleepwalk from bathroom to bed, and that's true, but there are other problems. Like turning over. The hips are loose, separated with the hormone Relaxin, getting ready for birth. The mattress pad used to feel so soft under me; now all I feel is the floor underneath. I wake with the ache in my hip. If I go to the bathroom then, I see my whole hip and thigh red in the mirror. When I go back to bed, I have to remember which side I was just sleeping on, which sounds like it would be easy, but all the disorientation from sleeping and not sleeping makes this difficult. I touch my hips and try to feel which one is hot from all the pooled blood. Having walked makes it hurt less. If I choose wrong, and fall asleep again on the same hip, I'll wake within a few minutes.

If I don't go to the bathroom, I start the process of turning over. One pillow between my legs and one under my belly must be readjusted. The ache in my hip turns to hot pain when I move to my back, and I feel the slow pops in my hip joints: one, two, three, four, five. The two knobs at the base of my spine complain with the sudden weight but I have to stay there a moment, to scoot and to place the pillows in the general direction of my landing.

There are nights when I'm doing this pretty much in my sleep, only a fifth awake, and this is where I give up on those nights. I only know because I wake up on my back and then the whole shebang hurts, because the pillows haven't been placed under my knees for support, and the weight has been bearing down on my spine. There's the added fear that the kid has lain on his own cord, blocking him from oxygen and suffocating him to death, though this will be more of a fear a little later in my pregnancy. This is the thought that fully wakes me, though, and sends me again over onto my side.

That last move, to the other side, isn't painful and indeed the aching hip gets all happy with the blood moving again and the weight off, but that's where the kid gets crabby. My belly doesn't follow me over like it used to. It lands next to me, and I only know it's part of me because I feel the lump of kid fall into the other side. He'd just managed to ball himself up in a nice comfortable position and now he has to figure it out again. For ten minutes or so, he thrashes around to find a good position. In the process, he may get distracted and play with his toes for awhile. I assume that's what he's doing; it sounds right, but it feels like he's jumping rope.

After all of this, I usually find if I haven't gone to the bathroom that the kid's repositioning has squeezed my bladder and I get up anyway. I'm in the bathroom on average of three times a night, sometimes more and, if I haven't been drinking my water, sometimes less. Last night, I reminded myself that there was a time when I could sleep all the way through the night. It's a distant memory.

If I haven't wakened Mr. Aran by this time, it's a damn miracle.

The sleeping part of the night is all dreaming. Some women dream of their unborn children; this is supposedly a big thing during pregnancy. I haven't done much of that, maybe because I have no reference. I have dreamed that I'm out on vacation and I remember I have a kid at home and it occurs to me, slow slow slow, that even newborns have to eat and oh yeah I'm supposed to be breastfeeding. So I rush home, sure he's dead, and find he's still alive but thin and gray and dying. Mostly, though, the dreams are lucid, stuff I think about to get myself into dreaming while I'm still awake, scratching my hands, dry from all the nightly hand washing. So there are warped sex dreams about other people, fake people. Usually I can't get them to seal the deal. They flirt and flirt and flirt and make out and cajole and talk and it's like puppets whose strings have become tangled. Like a skipping record, my subconscious sometimes can't take over and make the dream go after I've fallen asleep.

I dream of getting lost in houses I don't live in; I dream of water. I dream of doctor's appointments where I'm told I need to watch my weight and then given detailed, explicit directions on what to eat that I can't follow and can't remember. "Take this and put it in a pot and cover it and boil it down until this is gone and then add this and this..." and I'm nodding at the doctor because I'm afraid of him, or maybe I want him to think I've got it under control.

It's important, when I wake, to know what time it is. I don't know why, but I have to know.

In the morning, I'm tired and abused. I look like I've been up all night, and I probably have.

posted by Samus @ 8:46 AM