"I Can't Sleep!"

(picture taken at 31 weeks--please excuse the weird expression, it's due to my lack of sleep-! haha)

Here's a hilarious excerpt from a book I'm currently reading called The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy (by Vicki Iovine). It's from the chapter, "Coming Into the Homestretch." I hope it makes you smile and even laugh to yourself as much as I did!

"Being unable to sleep and stay awake were my greatest challenges at the end of my pregnancy. Being tired was no guarantee that I was going to snooze when I went to bed each night. Some Stepford Wives cheerfully told me that this was nature's way of preparing me for the sleepless nights that I would experience as a new mother. That is like saying dieting will prepare you for starvation, if you should be asked to endure it. As far as I was concerned, no nature that was capable of giving chameleons the gift of disguise would be stupid enough to think that the the cure for no sleep was more no sleep.

"No, you can't sleep for two major reasons. First, the baby is pulling or sitting on every part of your body but your face and your feet (and those are swollen from water retention). Second, you are so preoccupied with what lies ahead; labor, delivery, motherhood, that you have a hard time turning your brain off at night. (Which is kind of ironic, because you will swear that you haven't been able to turn your brain on most days lately.)

"Now is the time for a reappraisal of your relationship with your bed pillows. They will grow to become your best friends, not only the one or two that you have always known and loved, but all the new pillows you will buy (or steal from your husband) to help them in their duties. The Girlfriends and I agree that you will need at least three pillows by this point; one between your knees to keep your hips supported, one propped slightly under your pregnant belly and one under your head and shoulders. Even better, you should consider buying one of those full-length body pillows that are sold in a million catalogs these days. I bought one, and after I got over the shock of how very big it was, I gamely brought it into bed. It felt magnificent, but it created a barrier between my husband and me in the bed that would have required helium to ascend. My husband referred to my giant pillow as my "Boyfriend," and I actually named it "Phil." Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on my mood, my husband wasn't finding me particularly irresistable, so he never complained about the line of demarcation between us. If you ask me, I think he might have been grateful.

"The one difficulty about my relationship with "Phil" was the difficulty "we" had when I wanted to turn over. First I would hurl myself from one side to the other, then I would grab Phil with both arms and both legs and flip it over with me, much like an alligator wrestler might do. It invariably shook the bed so violently that my husband nearly fell out and the comforter would land somewhere halfway across the room."

Oh the joys of pregnancy!