The need for sleep

Week: 36 +5 days

Time: 9:37 am

Lack of proper sleep: 3 weeks +

It’s just been an hour that I’ve been awake and I am already falling asleep. I am really looking forward to it being 2:30 in the afternoon so that I can go to sleep. You may be wondering why I am so tired considering I am jobless and don’t do much work at home.

Try sleeping with a watermelon of a stomach and see how much you sleep in the first place. And FYI, if you thought that you had to follow a hundred rules while you were awake to ensure your baby’s growth, you are dreaming. For even when you are, you’ve got to follow the rules. Don’t sleep on your stomach (that won’t be possible anyway even if you tried), don’t sleep on your back, try not to sleep on your right side. So what options are you left with? One position, that’s it. Sleep on your left side.

I have always been a sleep-on-your-tummy kinda girl or if it’s too hot, sleep on your back and when it’s a little chilly sleep on your right. I NEVER sleep on my left side. I don’t like that position. Never did. For the last four months I have been forcing my body to learn to sleep on the left (baby needs blood-stop being selfish!!). But my body is so damn stubborn. The moment I fall asleep, it quietly changes position to the worst position of the lot- on your back. It apparently hinders blood flow from the lower part of the body to the upper. Thankfully my brain wakes me up, I try to change my position to the left but now will I be able to sleep in that position? Of course not. My body is stubborn as a mule.  So I have a chat with myself- five minutes, I’ll sleep on my back then change position. Next thing I know I wake up an hour later sleeping on my back. I completely panic. I just read somewhere that sleeping on your back could create a lot of serious problems for the baby. I quickly check on my baby. Puchku are you ok?? I jiggle my tummy a little bit. I hold my breath. Please let my baby be ok. After a minute, puchku wriggles. Phew!!!After so much drama, how does one go to sleep? Another hour goes and sleep slowly starts to come back to me. I am so relieved. I am so tired. My body has finally acquiesced to sleeping on the left side. But then guess what happens? Your kidneys are located on the side you are recommended to sleep on; so just when you can’t keep your eyes open anymore, you get the urge to go pee. And these urges aren’t like normal urges. You suddenly get this tremendous urge and when you do, you gotta go right then (you really don’t want to pee in your bed). So you drag yourself to the loo, peeing takes a bit of time- you want to empty your bladder coz you don’t want to get up again. By the time you are back in your bed, your sleep is almost gone, the fear the drama brought with it is also gone, so your body starts protesting again. And so the cycle continues.  In between all this, you try to get some sleep.

There are few things in life I really love and one of them is to sleep. Before pregnancy, if I didn’t sleep for at least 7 hours, I’d wake up with dark circles and be tremendously grumpy- no one dared to break my sleep cycle. I had taken a pledge when I found out that I was pregnant that I’d sleep so much in the nine months that after the baby is born and when I won’t get any sleep, I’d reminisce about my nine months of long hours of peaceful sleeping and console myself.  Sigh!!

(This was originally written on 27th September.)