Sleep is always an issue for everybody. I haven’t met a person who gets the rest they want, and I’ll bet you haven’t either. And the lack of sleeping goes double for pregnant women. I don’t need to tell you this unless you’re a man. Or a clueless husband.
I’m pretty lucky though since my husband seems to be more sensitive than I would have expected him to be in an instance like this. I mean, in the past I’ve tried several times to explain to him the physical inconveniences of menstruation, cramps especially. He nods and insists he gets it, but I can tell by the boredom behind his eyes that he thinks I’m overreacting. That’s when I punch him in the gut.
But he pays attention to my sleeping habits now, if he didn’t before. Of course, it’s not hard to spot the changes, er… increases, rather. For one, I need an extra hour a night on average. In addition to that I am now prone to taking sporadic naps at all hours of the day. Often if I don’t get the nap (lasting anywhere from 1 to 3 hours) I find myself doing that drowsy head-bobbing thing while I drive to work; which is quite disconcerting wouldn’t you say?
Anyway, back to the husband.
Sometimes I wake up in the morning to find out that he’s been sleeping on the couch. This in itself isn’t weird because he actually enjoys sleeping on the sofa from time to time, but now he’ll say things he never said before like, “well, did you sleep better last night?” This leads me to think that he’s genuinely interested in making sure that, in addition to securing his sleep, I get the sleep I need.
He’ll even stop shoving furniture around (we’re still in the process of unpacking from our move) when I come out of the bedroom and snap “G*d Da*n it Jason! I don’t make this much noise when you’re taking a nap!” He replies with something sensible like ‘Sorry sweetheart, I didn’t know you were sleeping.” And when I wake up later he’ll be sitting quietly, again on the couch, waiting for me to finish my nap. Ain’t he sweet?
At first when we got pregnant I may have felt he was backing off ever so slightly, being a bit cool about the pregnancy. But below I’ve added some links for websites where other pregnant women share their unsupportive husband stories. Truly unsupportive, I mean… wow. My husband hasn’t been at all unsupportive, by any measure of the word. I think now that he just needed to see me with a belly before he could let the baby become exciting.
http://www.health24.com/experts/archive/default.asp?postid=1821268
http://community.babycenter.com/post/a27419211/does_anyone_else_have_an_unsupportive_husband
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071115010211AACXx3C