Will I ever sleep through the night again?  Everyone I ask has the same response: “Ha ha ha, not for the next 18 years!”  But seriously: Sleeping.  Will it ever happen again?

This week was a perfect confluence of sleeping troubles.  First off, Wes caught himself a head cold that resulted in much snoring and really icky throat sounds during the night.  As I lay awake listening to my husband snore himself into a coma and make horrid swallowing sounds that made me dry heave, it took every ounce of love I have for the man not to kick him in the shins.

Also vying for the Most Problematic Nighttime Annoyance Award was acid reflux.  This is the holiday season, which means tasty food is every-freaking-where.  This is a great problem to have normally, and when I’m in tip-top overeating form I can pack away the pot roast like no one’s business.

This year, however, my stomach is squished by Squishy and I can’t handle my beef.  I keep eating what I think of as reasonable portions and then wake up at night with the overwhelming urge to throw up thanks to my stomach’s refusal to accommodate that much food.

When everything goes smoothly, I can sleep like a champ.  The baby’s active at night (his favorite time to party is between 2 am and 4 am, I’ve learned) but I’m normally a sound enough sleeper that I sleep through it (the only reason I know he’s so active then is because of the above mentioned issues keeping me up).

Luckily, Wes is on the mend and there aren’t too many other overeating opportunities on the horizon.  This doesn’t, however, inure me to the effects of sleep deprivation right now.  I told Wes that it’s cool for me to be up all night while I don’t have to work, but if he’s still snoring when I’m working, one of us is sleeping on the couch.

In Squishy-related news, he had a growth spurt this week.  I woke up one morning and my belly was noticeably bigger.  I’m 99% sure he’s head-down (though the ultrasound tomorrow will either confirm or deny this) because all the wiggles I feel down low are little and delicate, like baby hands, and the up-top movement are all huge and sweeping, like knees and feet.

We played with him with a flashlight the other day and we’re not sure whether Squishy was into it or not.  The pregnancy books say that he can see the light now so we thought we’d give him something pretty to look at.  He was wiggling around, and continued wiggling after we introduced the pretty flashlight, so who knows what he thought of it.

I’ve also started reading to him at night.  That I know he likes, and it’s a good thing too because I’ve been reading The Dresden Files to him and if he didn’t like those I’m not sure what we’d do.

The nice thing about reading to a fetus is I don’t have to worry about subject matter, so if I’m reading to him about ghouls I don’t have to censor the scary stuff to prevent nightmares.  We may have to find different books to read at bedtime when he’s a little older.