Nightlife (or, Pregnancy Blows Goats)

Here’s how my nights used to go:
Carefully blow dry and curl my well-cut and highlighted hair. Spend an hour getting my makeup just right. Decide whether the Pradas or the Guccis look better with the tiny scrap of fabric I’ll be wearing that would get you arrested on most U.S. streets. Get a cab. Eat dinner at Nobu with gorgeous, rich, highly sexed guy who acts like he’s lucky to get a date with me. Bypass line outside nightclub, get escorted directly to VIP section. Order $26 martinis that taste better than dinner. Dance on tables. Go skinny dipping at midnight in rooftop pool with skyline view of midtown Manhattan. Wake up the next morning and order brunch that costs more than my car.

And for those of you who now think I’m a pretentious asshole, here’s how my nights currently go:

9:00pm: Attach a sticky, irritating Breathe-Right strip to my nose so I can hopefully breathe through the pregnancy-induced apnea that makes me wake up gasping for air in the middle of the night. Put the greasy hair that I’m too tired to wash into a ponytail so it doesn’t make my neck break out.

9:30pm: Arrange seven oddly-shaped pillows in a complicated configuration that might guarantee more than an hour’s sleep tonight, if I’m lucky.

10:00pm to midnight: Toss and turn. Except “toss and turn” implies moving in some sort of meaningful way. This is more like writhe and heave while struggling for breath. No matter which side I lie on, my arms fall asleep, my back cramps, and my sharp hip bones, completely unpadded and forced to bear 25 extra pounds of weight, dig into the mattress so hard they develop ulcers.

1:00am: Wake up to The Thirst That Will Not Be Slaked. Which will shortly be followed by The Urge To Pee That Will Not Be Denied.

1:45am: Wake up to go to the bathroom for the millionth time and notice that the sheets are strangely sticky. Turn on the light, see blood on the sheets and Freak. The Fuck. Out. Run around looking for the doctor’s phone number and my hospital bag while praying the baby isn’t coming this early and ignoring the searing pain in my hips for as long as possible. Finally look down and realize that I’ve actually put so much pressure on the skin over my sharp hip bones that they’ve developed ulcers and are bleeding. This is just ridiculous, but I’m too tired to contemplate it. Bandage up the damage, change the sheets, go back to bed.

3:00am: Wake from a Kafka-esque nightmare whereby I’ve turned into a giant insect and my fellow law students are throwing apples at my back. Attribute the nightmare to the white-hot pain grinding through my lower back, which my doctor has explained is simply my bones moving to accommodate the baby. But I shouldn’t worry, the doctor says, because this blinding, staggering pain doesn’t touch the baby at all. I may be a bad mother, I may be a bad person, but at 3:00 in the morning with my bones literally being ground apart, I could give a flying fuck how the baby feels. I. Am. In. Pain.

4:30am: Wake up torn in half by a contraction that feels like wild dogs sinking their teeth into my lower belly. Turn on the light and, for the eighth night in a row, reach for a little chart entitled, “Braxton Hicks Labor Versus Real Labor: How To Tell The Difference.” Determine that all is well. Consider throwing myself off a bridge. Go back to sleep.

5:30am: Lose the fight against the daily nausea that’s already been building for several hours. Get up for good.

6:00am: Force myself to eat some soggy toast, for the baby’s sake. Think about the smug already-mothers who seem to get so much enjoyment out of shaking their fingers at me and tittering, “Just you wait till the baby’s born! You’ll never get any sleep!” Bite me.