Hello, Baby. So Long, Sleep.

Ah, the Snoogle. Sleep wedge. Pregnancy pillow. It's funny how one 'C' shaped cushion can stir such different emotions. To a pregnant woman, it's a soft embrace cradling her and her child each night. The only conceivable way to get any sleep with a growing melon a few inches from her boobs. To the tired husband, it's a ridiculous question mark spooning his wife and poking him in the face as he sleeps. He knows it's a necessary evil if the mother of his child wants any rest, but that doesn't stop his fantasy of hoisting it into the dumpster in all its floppy and misshapen glory.

Priorities shift at different points in our lives. Children change you. Everyone knows this. Parents experience the polar change firsthand. Others accept it as fact in the same way we know being hit by a car is painful without feeling the need to kiss the underside of a Chevy. But it's the unexpected changes to the overlooked bits and pieces of daily life that I'm talking about.

Sleep. Oh, yes. I remember you. Sleep is that relationship you had years ago that you always took for granted. Sure, it was on-again, off-again and you always found your way back to each other, but you never truly appreciated all it did for you. It might have been clingy at times and demanding more of a commitment than you were prepared to make, but you strung it along because it was comfortable.

That was the Sleep you used to know. Sleep, once pregnancy has settled in, becomes the bitter ex determined to win the post breakup who's-life-sucks-less competition. It conveniently shows up uninvited and seductively glides through the room to remind you just how good you had it before.

Don't worry; that will pass. Eventually, your child will be born and you will have romanticized the memory of Sleep to the point where you can't believe you ever had a shot with it at all. Here's the upside: you will by then have found yourself in a perpetual state of exhaustion where you're also convinced your pre-pregnancy weight was 98 pounds and that you always appreciated everything your mother did for you. The point is, pregnancy brain never left and you can't ever really trust those foggy memories of yours again. Shake it off, have a yawn, and move that Snoogle to the garage for next time - just keep an eye on your husband when trash day rolls around. Sleep may be too elusive for a mere pillow these days, but there's nothing like a gummy grin to lift the haze of exhaustion. You'll sleep tomorrow - for now, it's time to play.