As anyone who has been pregnant or who has been the sleeping partner of pregnant person can tell you: it’s hard for pregnant ladies to get comfortable. After 20 weeks or so lying on your back is verboten, even if you wanted to, which you don’t. Lying on your stomach, even if you wanted to, which you don’t, is impossible. You’re supposed to lie on your side (circulation and whatnot, left side preferred). That means that in order to get comfortable you need something like an igloo made of pillows. I’ve been stacking ever more around myself in a complex nest, which is comfortable once established. But the Turning Over Process is lengthy and complicated. It’s impossible to sleep through. Not just the part about resituating one’s belly and limbs, but also the part about deconstructing and reconstructing the igloo. (Annie LaMott writes of her post-partum belly: “It lies beside me politely, like a puppy.”) Also, even the most kind-hearted partner is likely to notice the injustice: you have six fluffy pillows, while he’s left with one meager cast-off. (I’d trade if he would have the c-section!)
So a couple weeks ago I had this pregnancy massage. It’s different from a regular massage in that they don’t use any heat, they keep you on one side or the other, and they surround you with lots of pillows! The lady said, “I want this to feel like you’re in a cloud.” This was my first encounter with a body pillow. Heavenly. I decided that having one at home was one of those getting-through-this luxuries that would help me, well, get through this. So I ordered one and it arrived yesterday in a box most amazingly thoroughly crushed, as if stamped on by a giant. No matter! The pillow survived transit quite well. Last night I launched my new relationship with the pillow. And I do mean relationship– it seems an awful lot like another person in the bed. It’s 72 inches tall. I’m no math whiz but I can tell you that this is taller than I am. It’s feathers and down, such that it has a sort of strange, floppy dead weight to it. The first time I turned over with it I felt like I was trying to change places with a dance partner who was drunk to the point of unconsciousness. It lies something like the Great Wall of China down the middle of the bed. Ben is out of town for a few days, but I think when he comes home he will find this new development somewhat alienating.
But, like a cloud? Yes. Yes. It’s only in transitions that it feels like a sodden log or an inebriated bedfellow. Once settled, all the parts, the limbs and the belly, are set adrift in a sea of feathers. And lucky Ben can have all the igloo fixin’s he could want now, pillows of all sorts. Me and my cloud are heading off to dreamland.