Midnight

Somewhere between a sniffly cold in August and my new friend pregnancy-related chiropractic issues, I find myself awake at midnight. So...hello.

My last pregnancy was a long time ago, so I've had a lot of time to put away all the unpleasantries from my mind and convince myself that I have an easy time of it. Now, I'm not that woman who has migraines and full-term puking or bedrest or vericose veins or early labor. I don't experience hard pregnancies. But I forgot how fragile I feel when I'm pregnant. I'm deliriously tired because I should be getting about three times the amount of sleep that I am, but everything hurts too much for me to get comfortable long enough to conk out. I get sick because I haven't been sleeping. I'm anxious because I'm so afraid I'm going to do something or eat something or forget something that will accidentally kill the baby. I feel like my boobs have been speed-bagged by an Olympic boxer. I have doubled my iron and protein intake and I still can't climb my stairs or read a story to my kids, for crying out loud, without getting inexusably winded. I'm stupid. Like my IQ has dipped twenty points. And I cry all the time because my neck hurts and because I have dishes on my counter and there was a sad little boy on a commercial and my daughter talked too much today.

Someone, tell me Jesus has mercy even on the silliest, saddest messes of pregnant ladies.

Please don't mistake me for one complaining. I feel like my life is one of those charmed lives that makes people really annoyed and think about adopting voodoo. I mean, we have autism (which admittedly offers me more than a few moments of like, seriously, W...T...F!!), but even with that, he's so brilliant and loveable, and has progressed so far and so quickly that I can't help thinking we're one of the lucky ones. So I fully recognize that I have nothing to complain about. What I mean to point out here is my human fragility. This is getting to me, because some moments in life do that sometimes.

So. Lord, have mercy, and remember me, the sinner.