Sleep

One of the side effects of early pregnancy that I felt last time AND that I am experiencing again this time is sleep. You may ask, do you mean you sleep all the time or do you mean you can't sleep? And to this I say, yes.

Basically, I cannot stay awake very well for more than two hours at a time. Obviously, I do it, because it is generally considered poor form to sleep at the reference desk or while checking in books. However, on a day I don't work, I generally take a nap in the early afternoon (often the same time as Athena) and then on any given day, I generally have trouble staying up past nine pm.

But then, I find myself waking frequently in the middle of the night due to my overactive pregnancy bladder, and then I can't get back to sleep. Like now, as I write this at 4:30 in the morning, munching on Triscuits. The Triscuits are not meant to help me sleep, except for the fact that they will hopefully stop the intense hunger I am suffering, which will, in turn, make it possible for me to return to peaceful slumber.

The insomnia hasn't actually been too much of a problem over the last week, because Athena has been waking around 2pm for no apparent reason (perhaps teething, perhaps nightmares) and wailing uncontrollably until one of us goes in there to comfort her. To get her back to sleep, we have to rock her for hours (usually two to three hours) and we have been switching off in this task some nights. There have been some nights when Chris has just done it himself, bless him, since she seems to calm faster and easier in his arms. But I certainly have done some time in the rocker. Often, after that period of rocking, I am able to sleep through the rest of the night with no incident.

Tonight, however, Athena is sleeping like an angel (do angels sleep?!) and here I am, cramming crackers into my face and wishing I could drift back to dreamland. I am counting the days until the second trimester, when my body will supposedly return to a fairly normal state... unless you count the lump that will form in my abdomen. But I'll take a lumpy tummy over this any day...