Thursday, June 28, 2012

A bad night's sleep

I'm at a little over 25 weeks at this point. My belly has become kind of an egg-shape, and that egg is changing my tolerance for all things physical, including sleeping. I now monger blankets in order to tuck them wherever it seems I need a cushion--the small of my back, between my knees, under the egg. There are pillows too--ohhh there are pillows, although the illustrious "Snoogle" I mentioned in another post is now for some reason intolerable and unhelpful. It's a uniform width, and it seems that the more the size and shape of my body vary, the more I need my supports to vary as well--length, width, firmness and softness are tolerated in different amounts as the recent weeks have progressed.

Last night I woke up at some random hour, of course, having to pee. When I laid back down, my mind started reeling, the baby started kicking, and absolutely nothing was comfortable. I tried to spread out, tried to lay perfectly stick-straight on my side, but wanted desperately to just fall asleep on my stomach. Not possible.

Best of all, I was woken from the sleep I finally got back to with a MASSIVE calf cramp. Like, I was already screaming when I woke up. Usually, I can flex my feet and work it out within a pretty short period of the time, but I'm pretty sure this was like a whole hour (three minutes) of  miserable whimpering and groaning and writhing before the ball of muscle in my leg relented.

In the midst of this eternal suffering, I had a mindful experience. I remember thinking, If labor is anything like this, I'm not going to do well." Then I tried to breathe slowly and controlledly through the leg contraction for a few breaths, and quickly resigned to whining and crying.

Maybe after a few more I'll be ready.

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