To sleep, perchance to dream about sleeping

I came to a realization last night that dismayed and saddened me a bit. This realization came after my husband had been gone for a week for business. The realization was this: for the first time in the eleven years we've been married, and the three + years prior to that we were friends, I slept better when my husband was gone.

This has never happened before. He has always been my safety blanket. Without him in the bed with me, I'm generally restless. Strange noises wake me up, and I have difficulty getting back to sleep. His presence is comforting to me, and I'm always relieved when he comes home again.

But now that I'm in the home stretch of my pregnancy, I'm having a ridiculously difficult time sleeping. I have two positions that are almost comfortable, sleeping on one side or the other, and that's it. I usually need to prop myself up partway with a pillow or two and hope for the best. I change positions a lot, because I'm only comfortable lying on my side for a few minutes. Then my hip and leg start to hurt, like a pressure sore, and so I roll over. And then there's the need to go to the bathroom. I generally get about an hour between potty breaks, so it means I have a limited amount of time to get to sleep and get some rest before I'm up again.

The two things that I noticed when my husband was gone were that I was able to spread out in bed a little bit, and that there wasn't any snoring. While he was gone I was able to put a body pillow, which takes up a lot of room, on one side of me, and the other, smaller pillow on the other side. That way I didn't need to wrestle the one pillow from one side to the other. I can't do this when he's here; I don't want to encroach on his side of the bed, and I like to be able to reach over and know that he's there. I can't do that with the pillow in the way. The other issue is the snoring. Both of us snore (although I don't think I have had much time to snore these days). Unfortunately, since I'm having trouble getting to sleep in the short amount of time I have between bathroom visits, the snoring is making it harder to get to sleep.

So, while I was sad and lonely while my husband was gone, I realized I slept a little bit better while he was gone, because I could spread out on the pillows a little better, and it was a little quieter so I had a better chance of falling to sleep.

Just one more reason I'm going to be happy to have this baby: I can have my relationship with my husband back like it's supposed to be.