CONSULTATION

I had a consultation with the doctor yesterday regarding my fitful sleep. When you go to the doctor, you expect him/her to have the solution, or even several solutions. Such was not the case yesterday. He basically said that it's too early in the pregnancy to take any drugs, and I don't want to anyway. At one point HE leaned HIS head on MY shoulder and said, "I'm sorry - I feel so helpless." Argh! So last night, I tried a different approach. I woke up at the following times & durations:
10:00 - 5 min
11:00 - 5 min
11:30 - 5 min
2:00 - 5 min
2:30 - 1 hour (Conan's on at 3! Who knew??)
5:30 - 5 min

At first, I thought, "Great. Here we go. Yet again, I'm going to be up all night." But then I decided to think of it as a game or something that was happening to someone else or something that just my baby and I were experiencing together - like a secret or something. I started to look at it as part of the process of her (or him) becoming a whole person and doing so in a way that she will be healthy and strong. It actually helped.

One good thing my doctor did remind me of is that estrogen is an extreme "personality." Once the estrogen crashes, it's Cry Cry City (like Bear Bear City for you SNL fans). He cited a study that was done on MALE med students. They were given estrogen steadily for 6 weeks and then they were cut off suddenly. The crash caused ALL of them to go into depression and 2.5% of them were on suicide watch! Oh my word! So the weepiness will have to be accepted too. It doesn't mean I don't want the baby or that I'm not grateful; it just means that I'm going to cry a lot for awhile, and then later, I won't cry as often. I'm still working on accepting the tears. They are disturbing.