Ha! Malfunctioning Body, Take That!

I've had a problem with early morning waking (my OB's words) for a bit over a week, and I thought I was going to lose it from lack of sleep. I mean, if you don't consider it already losing it to (a) burst into tears at no provocation, (b) lose further sleep because of stress dreams about being too tired to care for my child, and (c) only have a few hours during the day when I can track or carry a meaningful conversation.

I told my doctor about the sleeping troubles at my last cervix check. I mean LAST cervix check. No more ultrasounds or internal exams until delivery time, and I get to stop going in every two weeks for a while. Anyway, Dr. G prescribed Ambien. I took the stuff a couple times when I was on hospital bed rest. If you didn't know, when they dispense meds in the hospital, you don't get a bottle with a bunch of literature about how you might die from taking it. You just get a pill and a nurse to watch you swallow it.

Being an avid reader of boring things and especially packaging, I discovered some of the somnambulant activities Ambien may cause. Sleep driving. Sleep eating. Sleep conversing: like sleep talking but you can have a seemingly lucid conversation in which the other person may not know you're sleeping. Amnesia of all of your nighttime activities. And these aren't the worst.

And while I didn't have any issues in the hospital (at least I don't remember having any), I fear that my uncontrolled, Jekyll-ish, sleepwalking self might get me in trouble in some of the following ways:

• Waking up Finley and feeding or diapering him in the middle of the night, and messing up either of these activities in a dangerous way.
• Calling, emailing, or facebooking friends, family, and acquaintances.
• Eating dairy and getting sick from it the following day.
• Promising to help Tim with something important and then not doing it because of the memory loss thing. (Actually, I sometimes do this when I'm half asleep anyway.)
• Driving myself to Target to look at baby clothes in my pajamas (underwear).

And there's always the possibility that my unconscious self will visit several all-night diners each night and eat all of their bacon. On the other hand, the idea of eating, drinking, and visiting the ladies' room while simultaneously sleeping sounds very convenient. At least I'd stop waking up starving and dehydrated (and therefore nauseated).

None of these exciting possibilities could be overshadowed by the possibility of not losing my mind from sleep deprivation, so short of having the hubs watch me for strange activity all night, I had to settle for a whole Unisom and a prayer that it wouldn't make me groggy until lunchtime the next day. It helped that I took it at 7 PM. While I still woke up every 4 hours to pee, I actually got back to sleep and had a full 12 hours. And didn't burst into tears the next day over having to leave the house.

It doesn't exactly fit my family's schedule or my preferred lifestyle to go to sleep at dinnertime and wake up before Tim leaves for work, but it does fit enough of my brain's idea of when I should be awake that we seem to have compromised in a healthy way. Also, it means I might avoid the possibility of accidentally videotaping my naked, pregnant T-rex impression and posting it to YouTube.