Sleeping In

When I called Andy at work around 1 p.m. to tell him that I was leaving work early to go home since I had actually taken a vacation day today but forgot about it, he informed me he wanted to sleep in tomorrow morning.

That's why when you're about 9+ months pregnant and ready to pop, people issue a warning "you'll be sleep deprived when that baby arrives" and "better catch up on that sleep now before the baby comes." As if it's that simple to sleep with 35 extra pounds attached to your front: it's impossible to sleep on your stomach due to the extra load, impossible to sleep on your back because all that weight arches your back so much that it hurts, which leaves sleeping on your side. For me, however, even with all extra cushions properly placed between the knees and supporting the belly, I could only sleep so much before my hipbone on which I was laying would start to hurt and the opposite butt cheek (the one high up in the air) would get all stiff and sore, as if I were doing butt cruches in deep sleep.

But what people don't tell you is that sleep deprivation is cummulative. We're more tired now at six and a half months than we were at birth. Between the baby who wakes up on average every two-three hours between 7 p.m. and 5:40 a.m. -- sometimes to nurse, other times just because to cry-- the dog who between 2-4 a.m. starts her musical whining demanding to be let in the back yard, sometimes to pee, other times to bark into the night (and if she's not barricaded upstairs in the room with us but we by some omission leave her in the living room, she'll just pee on the carpet), and our otherwise quite pleasant neighbor who in the last two years since we moved in has been consistently doing some nightly house and yard repair -- he must be either digging for treasure or burying dead bodies -- we have not gotten more than an hour or possibly an hour and a half of sleep at night.

That's why Andy requested to sleep in tomorrow morning.
"But we are going to meet Kris and Alex for breakfast at 9 am tomorrow," I replied. Nine am was the strategically chosen hour when the baby will be awake and the breakfast/brunch crowd will have not risen yet. Since teh baby "woke up" at about 3 months, we really haven't taken him to any public eating spaces. It just seemed like too much of a hassle, trouble and work.

"Oh that's fine," Andy responded. "I was thinking like sleeping in 'til 8."

Silly me, who still thinks that sleeping in implies waking up at the crack of noon.