At around 2am I’m still awake, curled up in the corner of the sofa in the darkness feeling my baby dance in my belly. What I imagine must be her fists make my belly button pop out momentarily while her feet are rhythmically kicking my right side. I’m snacking on whatever first met my hand in the fridge – a slice of cheese and a tomato this time. It’s been six hours since tea and I’m hungry.
We had such a fun weekend! We visited our future house introducing ourselves to the neighbours, met a whole bunch of friends over the happy occasion of engagement drinks (yay more weddings to come!) on Saturday night, and finally gorged on cakes and scones on Sunday at my friend’s baby shower & birthday afternoon tea at the lovely Mews of Mayfair. After a fairly quiet first week on maternity leave I loved the super social weekend!
I expected to be positively knackered by Sunday night and I was. At 10pm we called it a night and went to bed. If only I could have slept… As a bit of background information, I’m a girl who loves her sleep and am pretty famous for my talent to nap virtually anywhere. Pre-pregnancy, between 11pm and 7am I’d be dead to the world. I even recall having arrogantly thought that people with sleep issues are just not tired enough – Please accept my sincere apologies for my ignorance as I’ve since come to realise how wrong I’ve been!
After a week of maternity leave I’m feeling pretty relaxed and whilst anticipation about the approaching labour is building up, I can’t say it’s anxiety that’s keeping me awake. But what is it then?! The third trimester introduced broken sleep as I started regularly waking up once or twice a night but I have never struggled to fall asleep again however, not until now.
Four hours later, having tried 1) stubbornly lying in bed pretending to be sleepy, 2) having a cup of herbal tea, 3) having a snack, 4) reading a book, and 5) scrolling through social media, I’m still awake. I finally dose off, just to wake up an hour later for the toilet. I’m relieved when the morning finally breaks and my fiancé’s alarm goes off.
I have a yogurt and see him off and go back to bed to read my book, feeling exhausted. I fall asleep around 9am and sleep for four hours!! I wake up unsure of the day of the week or what it was I was meant to be doing. Eating my breakfast at 2pm still in my PJs I feel like I’ve lost control of my life. In an attempt to to rectify the situation I tidy up the flat, fold some laundry, put a wash on and load the dishwasher. It’s already getting dark outside when I finish.
I run a bath and decide to finish my book. Tomorrow I’ll be better. As a matter of fact I decide to pre-book a yoga class just to make sure I’ll get out of the house by noon.
My biggest achievement of the day was making dinner for us once my fiancé came home from work. I’m terribly insecure in the kitchen but I’m trying to change that by attempting to cook very simple, healthy dishes. It helps that we both prioritise nutritional value over taste (although good taste is a definite plus!). We’ve also began to order our weekly groceries from Amazon Fresh to make meal planning and execution as easy as possible! Tonight we had beef steaks with garlic roasted tender stem broccoli, beans and sweet potato wedges. I felt pretty proud having pulled it off, if I’m honest, as I’m pretty clueless about frying steaks. ☺️
Now it’s bed time again. I’m tired but already dreading the night… Sigh. If only my baby was already here to make staying up at night feel a bit more justified!
xoxoxo,
Sini
PS. Written on Monday night
PPS. Not every night is this bad