Since going to see the doctor's in London, and being advised to rest for at least one hour a day for the duration of this pregnancy, I have felt much, much better. Turns out that having three children and being pregnant for the 6th time can take its toll on your body. Unless I rest every day, come one o'clock in the morning, I am woken with horrible crampy pains across my abdomen which only subside as the sun rises and it is time to get up again. Doctors think this is due to general wear and tear, and bed rest has been the key to stopping this rather degenerative sleep deprivation.
You may think it is simple to just go to bed. But basically, if I go to sleep for two hours a day, then that means that two hours a day of not pottering around and getting things done. I don't get an extra two hours awake at night, because I am still as knackered by the end of the day as normal, but I do get to sleep at night, rather than wander around drinking peppermint tea and reading blogs by candle light!
And especially on the weekend, when we have no one around to help out with the kids, it is husband who has to take up this extra child minding, dishwasher loading etc etc. I feel so sorry for him (although of course, he is half responsible for my predicament to start with). He is so knackered and really needs to lie in or nap, but if he does then we tend to run out of time to do anything at all with our free time and he hates that, so it is his sleep which is being sacrificed while I snore away.
On the bright side, the resting is really working. I have gone from an average of three or four night's lost sleep per week to none since beginning to put my feet up.
This last week I have been well and truly knocked out with the flu. The sleep tally has risen. I have never spent so much time in bed. It is not, surely, natural for a human to sleep so much without actually lapsing into full-on hibernation? Days and days, hours and hours of being unconscious during the day and then sleeping again at night. Having just awoken from another long nap (I went to bed thinking I would not be able to sleep since I had only been up for five hours and the sum total of my efforts today has been playing lego and putting the marzipan layer on the Christmas Cake, but was out of it within minutes and pushed out another couple of hours of good quality zzzs), it is probably only another few nano-seconds until it is time for bed again.
A couple of days ago, he went to get our toddler out of her cot before heading off to Tajikistan for the week.
"Where's Mummy?" he asked her, and although I was actually downstairs plaiting the hair of our other two for school.
"Bed!" she confidently replied.
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