You might think rolling over is no big deal unless perhaps you’re training your dog, or your infant has developed a greater degree of mobility. Consider, however, the plight of the poor pregnant woman, a beached whale trapped on her back in the divot of a sagging mattress.
Rolling over is no small feat, especially once you’ve reached the point where you can no longer see your feet.
Deconstructing the rollover
Before we get into the bio-mechanics of rolling over for a pregnant woman, lets first consider the act of rolling over while not in that most delicate state.
I sleep on the right side of the bed. If I start out lying on my right side at the very edge of my side of the bed, rolling over involves falling to my back and then using momentum and my abdominal muscles to pull me up on my left side. At this point I have traveled over 3/4 of the way across our full sized bed, and my husband has been displaced onto the floor.
Now, if your spouse is willing to just stay on the floor, you’re golden. But if your spouse is anything like mine, he expects to get back into the bed – of which you are taking up your 2/3 right out of the middle. Making room for him means you must scootch (I’m using the technical term here) back over to your side.
Scootching of course, involves bending your knees and pressing your feet into the mattress enough to lift your bum and swing it to the right, then use your abdominal muscles to pull your upper body the rest of the way back over to your side of the bed. Notice that so far in this description we have used our abdominal muscles twice. After that much exercise, it’s time for a nap.
A different perspective
Now let’s reconsider this scenario from the perspective of a pregnant woman.
Sleeping while pregnant requires a lot more pillows. By far, the most critical pillow is the pillow between your knees that helps keep the spine straight. The other pillows may be added or subtracted according to relative comfort level, which may change at any given moment. What are the other pillows for?
One for between the feet to keep them from, heaven forbid, touching each other.
Another smallish or super soft down pillow goes between the belly and the mattress for support.
A pillow in the arms for holding and snuggling and squeezing, another at the lower back for lumbar support, and of course,
the pillow that goes under the head.
Now re-imagine the act of rolling over while keeping all of the pillows necessary for adequate rest in their appropriate positions.
You can’t do it.
You must first disengage from the pillows, roll over, scootch back to your side of the bed and then wake up your husband and have him retrieve all the pillows that fell to the floor when your whale -butt scootched back into them.
After grumpy husband throws pillows at you, you must then reposition all of the pillows to find a comfortable enough position to return to sleep. This could take several attempts as from day-to-day or even hour-to-hour, the one position that is comfortable may change considerably.
The betrayal of the body pillow
We have recently discovered the full body pillow which takes the place of several of the pillows listed above. This has been an immense improvement on our sleeping conditions and marriage.
On the down side, this pillow is about the size of a small adult, which means we are essentially sleeping three across our tiny full-sized bed.
In addition, I have returned from a potty run on many occasions to find my pillow contently snuggled up in my husbands arms, my husband’s leg thrown over the bottom half. It stings a bit that my pillow would betray me in this manner, and further extends the amount of time it takes to get settled into a sleep position when I must first wrestle the pillow from my husband’s arms.
Physiological changes during pregnancy
The two rolling over scenarios I have described above both ignore the physiological changes in a woman’s body during pregnancy.
The first and most critical being increased clumsiness. How could clumsiness come in to play when one is lying down throughout the entire ordeal? Get yourself knocked up and you’ll figure it out.
In addition, we get winded much more easily and the act of rolling over may require a stop, mid-roll, to catch one’s breath. Now it may seem like the logical place to stop and catch your breath may be mid-roll while you are flat on your back. This is, however, the worst possible position from which to try to catch your breath. While on your back the uterus and baby push the rest of your organs further up under your rib cage making it difficult to breath even if you haven’t already winded yourself.
Also, if you stop while flat on your back, you have completely lost all momentum meaning the remainder of the roll will be powered entirely by your now non-existent abdominal muscles. Besides, odds are you will suddenly have to run to the bathroom mid-roll anyways.
The easiest answer to rolling over in bed while pregnant: Get up and go to the bathroom and when you come back, rip the damn body pillow out of your husband’s arms, beat him with it for a minute and then lie down in the position in which you want to sleep.
creative non-fiction, essays, I want to be Erma Bombeck when I grow up
How often do you get writer’s block?
often, I have a tendency to feel like I have nothing of value to say, and when I do have something to say, that what I have to offer will be offensive to those that I care about
How do you fix it?
I write it in my journal or I just swallow what ever it is that I’m most passionate about and then I do a meme or post pictures in my blog instead of being brave (note: I definitely do not recommend this to others)
Do you type or write by hand?
both, the more emotional the topic the better it is to write by hand, but technical writing is always composed right on the computer
Do you save everything you write?
not everything, but a pretty big percentage, I like to come back to it later, even the junk, and see if it inspires something else later on
Do you ever go back to an old idea long after you abandoned it?
see above. I go back all the time, it’s amazing what I find that I hadn’t noticed before
Do you have a constructive critic?
unfortunately no. I’d really like to find that. I have plenty of critics and I have lavish praisers, but no constructive feedback
Did you ever write a novel?
not yet, one of these days.
What genre would you love to write but haven’t?
science fiction
What’s one genre you have never written, and probably never will?
horror, I don’t like reading it, so I doubt I would write it
How many writing projects are you working on right now?
no idea, 2 or 3 that i actively work on, but there are thousands of projects on my harddrives just waiting for me to come back and finish
Do you write for a living? Do you want to?
I would love to make a living from writing, but it’s not paying the rent yet
Have you ever written something for a magazine or newspaper?
not yet
Have you ever won an award for your writing?
some blog awards, I don’t know if that counts
What are your five favorite words?
hope, silly, assiduous, engage, lounge
Do you ever write based on your dreams?
absolutely, maybe not the entire dream, but there’s a kernel in there that gets the ball rolling
Do you favor happy endings, sad endings, or cliff-hangers?
I’m a sucker for happy endings, I read to escape, I like reading to make me feel better, not worse
Have you ever written based on an artwork you’ve seen?
I haven’t tried that yet but it sounds like a good way to battle writer’s block
In exactly three months you are scheduled to make your grand entrance into this world, although the actual timing of that event is more up to you than any doctor’s calculations. I’m scared and excited all at the same time. I can’t wait to meet you, to hold you, to see you snuggled in your father’s arms.
Last night we went to our first childbirth class and watched a video of a woman going through labor and giving birth. I cried. I don’t think that was the intent of the movie, but it moved me. Somebody once said that parenting is deciding to allow your heart to walk around outside of your body. That’s probably the closest to how I felt watching that movie. Like it would be my heart, right there in my arms; tangible and real and fragile.
There is so much that I hope for you. I hope you will learn to think for yourself rather than just parroting the views and opinions others. I hope you will understand and value the difference between fact and opinion. I hope you will learn to process information and to see through the hype and sensationalism that is so prevalent in our world. I hope you will understand the love trumps hate, no matter what, even if the haters claim to be representing God. I hope you will learn that you are responsible for your own happiness and that you can’t just sit around feeling sorry for yourself and waiting for happiness to land on your doorstep. You have to get out there. You have to make friends and go to them rather than waiting for them to magically materialize. I hope you realize that feeling sorry for yourself only makes you feel more sorry for yourself. I hope you learn to value people for their differences rather than trying to change them to be more like you. I hope you learn to value yourself, and at a much younger age than I did. I’m still learning that lesson. I hope you learn the difference between having an understanding of where you stand with others, and worrying about what they think of you. Don’t worry about what they think of you.
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those that matter don’t mind.
That quote came from Dr. Seuss, an author with whom you will become very familiar. It’s a short quote with a very big idea. One that I still have trouble dealing with because the truth is, sometimes the people that matter do mind. Sometimes the people who mind are are people you love, and it hurts when they love you for who they want you to be instead of loving you for who you are. I’m going to make a promise right now. I’m going to love you for who you are, whoever that turns out to be.
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