Sleeplessness and Late-Term Pregnancy

I have been keen on writing about sleeplessness for awhile.  Sleeplessness - which is different that insomnia - happens all the time in this pregnancy.  First off, if you have a young child already, chances are you're not getting your eight uninterrupted hours in.  My four-year old rarely sleeps through the night in her own bed. She ends up with me around 4AM.  But it doesn't matter because I will have already visited the bathroom a few times before then, so the eight hours of sleep without an interruption wouldn't have occurred anyway.  Yes, hugely pregnant people pee a lot.  Day and night. Everyday. Round the clock. I empty my bladder right before hitting the sack, but two hours into bedtime, I have to pee like a racehorse.  Where did the liquid come from? Did I sleep walk to the kitchen and guzzle down a gallon of milk? I don't think I did.  Then a few hours after that, yet another urgency from my bladder wakes me out of sleep for another round trip to the loo. That second time might get me through until 7AM, but by then I would have been woken up by my daughter climbing into the bed. (She doesn't climb quietly.) The 7AM pee is the most urgent of all.  There is no way I'll have a full night of sleep now.  And in 7 weeks? Even less sleep awaits me. Yee haw. Can't wait for less sleep.  And if I'm not constantly being woken up by my excretionary system or the climbing daughter, there are plenty of other things that take their place: 1.) A meowing cat pawing at the bedroom door at 5:30AM, 2.) Sirens and car alarms going off on the street 3.) A mosquito, oh, and my favorite...4.) Good old-fashioned insomnia.   Yes, that delightful nighttime companion comes for a chat every so often.  I start thinking about the orchestration I will have to master and muster up in seven short weeks.  I start thinking about my daughter's kindergarten choices for next year. I start asking out loud, "Will I be a good mother to two children?" Then sleep is evasive for the next several hours. In the morning I have that heavy feeling in my eyes and head, which reminds me of the times I'd pull all-nighters in college to cram for tests.  But I am merely lying around waiting for a baby to come out of me. How can the two things be the same? No sleep is no sleep, I guess. Fortunately, insomnia is the least frequent of the sleep-distractors I encounter. One more obstacle I just remembered (and how could I have forgotten?) that deserves a blog of its own: The belly gets in the way of a good night's sleep.  What do you do with a hippo-sized appendage? Last night I thought I crushed my organs as I lay on my back.  That's a formidable topic which I will pick up tomorrow. Good night! Sleep tight! Don't let the bed bugs bite. (They already did, yet another topic to share.)