Wanted: Sensory Deprivation Chamber

My relationship with sleep is becoming a strained one.
Let me tell the story of last night.

12 AM
Around midnight my eyelids were drooping. Already in bed, I turned off the television and rolled onto my left side. Sleeping on the left side of my body shifts my mammoth uterus off a major blood vessel, which helps with the swelling (that and I’ve always slept this way). Baby Daddy takes this as his cue to snuggle up and drape his arm around me. This is how we have slept since the beginning of us. And since the beginning of us it has been a contest to fall asleep before he starts all the god awful snoring. The minute his arm comes over me I hear the crack of the gun in my head, the race is on. I know I have mere seconds to fall asleep before he starts in. I rarely win this race.

I’m not always sensitive to his sawing of logs but I’m reactive in general lately so…… I spend the hour between 12 AM and 1 AM fighting the Great Big Snorehead. “Hey, you’re snoring” and “Stop snoring!” and “No snoreheads allowed!” and “Dude… seriously?” all to no avail. Holding his nose until he gasps for breath via his mouth, no good. Putting pillows over my head, putting pillows over his head, kicking shins and throwing elbows, nothing. Finally I roll him over on his right side, damn near rolling him off the bed itself, and then…. eventually……I fall asleep.

2 AM
I hear a noise in the kitchen. I’ve been asleep for an hour. I don’t know how or why I heard the noise but I literally shoot out of bed and storm into the kitchen shouting “Hello!?”…. only to find a startled little Night Walker (formerly known as Boo Boo, formerly known as Doo Doo Monkey) staring at me wide eyed, and she says “I was…I was just thirsty Mama”.

Now I am WIDE awake. I go back to bed with Snorehead (formerly known as Baby Daddy, formerly known as Loving Husband) and try to fall back to sleep, only to realize I have to pee. Of course. The first pee of the wee hours. The first pee of many, many a pee.

2:30 AM
I’m still awake, bladder empty, belly huge, when Night Walker suddenly appears at my bedside complaining of “weird noises” in her room. Any other night I might have investigated, put her at ease and tucked her back in but tonight I just threw back the covers and said “Get in”.

3 AM
THEY ARE BURNING ME ALIVE!
I’m cooking in their body heat, being sandwiched between the Snorehead and the Night Walker. One of them has to go. Snorehead will be getting up shortly to go to work, and is not afraid of weird noises. In fact he cannot possibly hear weird noises, or ANY noises, over his own noise so….. I shake him awake and very sweetly request that he move to the spare bedroom. He does so, groggily and graciously. I roll into the warmth of the space he left while Night Walker sleeps at arms length from me.

4 AM
Night Walker is all up in my grill! Over the course of an hour Night Walker has inched all the way over to my side of the bed, flung her leg over me, attached her hands like suction cups to me, and gluing the baby fat of her cheek to mine. It’s so warm inside her grip I’m convinced I will catch on fire. I spend the next hour pushing her back over to her side of the bed only to fight her off again every five minutes.

AND…. I have to pee.

5 AM
Snorehead no longer snores. He’s coughing instead. He’s awake in a bathroom somewhere in the house and I hear his incessant morning coughing. It sounds like an old man dying. I can’t remember, at that early hour, if it’s due to his medication and I should feel sorry for him or if he’s doing it on purpose just to make me crazy. I think it’s the latter.

6 AM
Would not at all object to a catheter.

6:30 AM
Somehow, someway, found me some sleepy town.

7:30 AM
RISE AND SHINE!
Snorehead has made me coffee and kissed me goodbye already. Night Walker wakes bright eyed and all sorts of 6 year old busy. I play games with the snooze button until at least 8 AM, deluding myself that this means I’m somehow getting more sleep. Except that I can't EVER go back to sleep since I ALWAYS have to PEE.


Surely this is how God prepares one for 3 AM feedings.