For awhile, Ellie actually went to sleep pretty easily. But after our trip to Japan to visit Aya’s parents last year, our system fell apart. I tried re-aligning her sleep methods shortly after our return, but in the end, I had failed miserably. Since then, we’ve just accepted the situation. Between Ellie’s ups and downs during the day, and Aya’s pregnant hormonal ups and downs during the night, sitting quietly in Ellie’s room for an hour until she fell asleep seemed much easier than fighting the battle.
GO TO SLEEP ALREADY!
Sleep has always been Ellie’s biggest challenge. (Well, my biggest challenge.) She is an extremely independent little girl, “I do it myself!” except when it comes to sleep. When it comes to sleep all of a sudden she turns into the biggest staller that requires a whole lot of hand holding. Literally and figuratively.
PREGNANCY DREAMS: THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
And the pregnancy dreams continue. There’s never a dull moment inside my head during the night while sleeping.
I was at a child’s birthday party at Saddam Hussein’s house. Yes, Saddam Hussein. Â And we were the only two guys there. Just my luck. And he was so excited that he wasn’t the only one. So excited that he kept me in the kitchen while the moms and kids partied in the other room. “Come, please sit, and eat,” he offered with a warm smile but slightly awkward.
PREGNANCY DREAMS: THE ABDUCTION
Sometimes the anxiety of expecting a baby can play out in weird ways in your dreams, like when Steve Winwood battled the Devil for me. But sometimes those anxieties don’t come out in your dreams. They come out in real life.
It was about 6am on a Monday morning. I was in the shower when I felt something strange on my leg. A little puzzled, I looked down and saw a small circle Band-Aid and thought, “Huh, that’s weird, I didn’t cut myself or anything.”
PREGNANCY DREAMS: THE GUARDIAN ANGEL
I’ve read that women have crazy dreams during pregnancy. They are experiencing so many hormonal changes, mixed emotions, fear, all kinds of things, so it makes sense that women would dream crazy things. This didn’t really happen to Aya when she was pregnant with Ellie. Me on the other hand, I had all kinds of weird things in my dreams. I read that it’s normal for expecting fathers to have dreams too. But I also read that they usually tend to be more intense sexual dreams (I guess that really is all guys think about). However, this was not the case for me. My dreams were anything but.
