Satisfactory Snoring

This week we learned the importance of sleep to a pregnant woman. Meg and I have both been very busy at work, myself with the Ironman Bike Ride, and Meg, recently moving into my turf, is busy with graphic design at work. So the days are long and the nights are short. And it’s icy cold out, well below zero degrees.

Monday night brought with it an incredible sense of lethargy. I was cooked. It was all I could do to sit on the couch with a fermented beverage in hand and read MPLS/ST Paul Magazine. Meg was graceful enough to make us something to eat.

Sleep time came and I decided to cruise a little TV. We were both over-tired by now, and we should have said our good-night kisses and rolled over to snore the night away. But I pushed it. I kept cruising tube. There was nothing on, and it burns my hide that of all those channels, there’s not any decent documentary on Egyptian mummies or a travel show on rail travel in the Canadian Rockies. Meg started to rut around and get anxious. “I’m all itchy!” she says when she can’t sleep. She has a small window of sleep opportunity. If she doesn’t get in during that period, she’s wide awake. Eventually I turned off the stupid tube, and went to sleep.

Morning came, and I could feel that Meg was grumpy. She got up late, and was slow to get ready. When I got up to make coffee I found her crying large tears into her breakfast cereal as she sat at the dining room table. Her hair was nicely combed and she had her cute gray dress on. Her eyes were soft and tired looking. She hadn’t slept well at all. Got up in the middle of the night to read, in fact. Tossed and turned and now she had to go to work. She said she had cutened up especially this morning to make herself feel better. It was going to be a long day for her.

I tried to cheer her up and started her car for her, packed her up and got her off to work. Later in an email she said she was struggling, but I could tell she was better. We’d get her all set up later that night, get her to bed early, and send her off to better dreams. And the next day she would wake up dancing around the room, as she normally does, and say what a miracle sleep is.

All this brings to mind a couple things. 1 – turn the TV off when Meg wants the TV off. It’s just one of those deals. She has to sleep when she has to sleep. Like myself, when I need food. There’s just no waiting. 2. The parental challenges of sleep deprivation with a newborn. That, I think, is in a category of its own. You do what you need to do in that situation. And it’s for your little baby, not because your husband won’t turn off the television, which is a good amount easier to handle.

Here’s wishing everyone the world over a good night’s rest. The world would be at peace if we could all get a solid 8 hours of satisfactory snoring.