barefoot and pregnant...

and utterly unable to sleep. at all. please let this not be a bad influence on the baby-yet-to-come. "but, mom, you were up at 4:30am playing on the internet." or maybe he'll just refuse to sleep at all as an infant.

so, yeah, things that are out of the question or fail, but that theoretically could help me sleep:

• Wine. oh, sweet wine. ok, so i never drank wine before bed to "unwind" before I was pregnant.  i used to be able to *sleep* before i was pregnant. the irony--or sad coincidence, to be sure--is not lost on me
• Tylenol PM, or some other over-the-counter, knock you right out and leave you way worse for wear in the groggy, cloudy morning. good for me, not so much for baby...
• Ambien. i took this on a plane once and slept blissfully and uninterruptedly. not even sure if i *could* take it during pregnancy, but as i'm trying to limit the unnecessary consumption of any chemicals for these nine months, it's clearly not something i'm taking up now
• Counting sheep.
  
  every time I start doing this I end up counting sheep in the periphery of my mind, but thinking about way more important things like nursery bedding sets, baby names, cloth diapers and whether i'll ever really start pre-natal yoga.  suddenly, i realize that while i've counted 200 sheep, i am even more awake than i was at the outset. it's like i want to bound out of bed and buy up some sock monkey sheets. (which, really, might have too much brown, come to think, as Mrs. A and i had previously agreed).
• Working out. ok, obviously, 4am is not the ideal time to hit the gym but if i had worked out today, i'd be more tired now and, thus, asleep (?). but when i got put on a "no exercise, no heavy lifting, nothing strenuous" regime at the outset of the pregnancy due to super-fun threatened complications, my gym-going was put to a stop. shockingly, prior to finding out i was pregnant, i had just implemented my get-in-shape-just-in-time-to-get-fat-and-pregnant plan. (really, i figured--with groundbreaking insight--that if i lost weight first, my net pregnancy gain would be less. like, amazing how i was able to come up with something so novel, no?) baby's health, however, comes before my own vanity, though, so as quickly as they began my gym days were over.
• Calling the CaliSister. not that she's so boring she puts me to sleep, but she's calming, yo. alas, even with the three-hour time difference and her own tendency to sleep way too little*, it's still too late to call her.

so crocheting and playing WordTwist seem my only options. there's got to be some other option out there...?

* unrelated to pregnancy, duh!

Comments

[Tara (Tulip)]

Pregnant?!?! Congratulations! So sorry to hear about the "threatened complications" thing ... I made it 6+ months without a wrinkle but am now on "house arrest" -- a/k/a modified bedrest -- and while you'll do ANYthing for baby, it's just ... limiting.

As far as sleep goes, I've had the insomnia BADLY as well. Seems extra cruel, given the sleep deprivation looming in our future. (One of the books described it as "like preparing for starvation by going on a diet.") I have resorted a few times to Benadryl, which is not ideal but at least on my OB's approved list.

And instead of the sheep counting, I switched over to baby names. Easiest if you pick a vowel, 'cause then you can try to come up with a name for every possible 2nd letter. Though I'm terrible at thinking of actual names -- if I stuck with my late-night inspirations, our child would be named something like "Omelette" or "Oaktree"....!