19 Weeks!

I'm nearly halfway through my pregnancy and I only have one complaint.

I can't sleep.

Pregnancy insomnia is pretty common, and I have had it in my previous pregnancies, but only in the last trimester when I'm huge and puffy and have started wondering if I can break my own water.

And I understand that it's my body's natural way of preparing me for the sleepless nights with a newborn. But I have a little news for my body. I've done this before. You'd think that the leftover stretch marks and general fogginess of a mother with two toddlers would trigger my brain to remember that I know how to handle a newborn. I've had two in the past three years.

Catherine just started sleeping through the night about six weeks ago. That's right. At 16 months old my middle girl was still waking up at night to snuggle with Mommy. When she finally started sleeping ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE NIGHT I was so excited. I'd get 6 months of sleep before the newbie arrived.

Nope.

That's about the time the insomnia hit. I fall asleep pretty easily, but I always wake up with a problem that has to be solved RIGHT NOW.  For instance: one night a few weeks ago I woke up and could not fall back to sleep for hours because I was thinking about the things I needed to pack in my hospital bag. And I haven't bought breast pads yet, so clearly my hospital bag isn't ready to be packed. And I don't know where my blue robe is. So my mind goes nuts thinking that the baby will come and I won't have my bag packed. Because I'm 19 weeks pregnant and I don't know where my robe is.

Now the big thing keeping me awake at night is that we don't know what we are going to call the baby. We have a name picked out (shut up, Jordan, she has a name. You need to commit, already) but we aren't sure about a nickname. During the day I can rationalize. I know that she doesn't need to have a nickname right now, that we can figure that out when she is born. Because Lord knows Evie will call her something ridiculous like Mackogee and the poor kid will be called Mack for the rest of her life (Sorry, Catherine... we were going to call you Cate.) But at night I toss and turn, stressing over the fact that we don't know if we're just going to call her her full first name, or try to shorten it since the name is kind of long and the girls can't really say it.

I guess I need to face the fact that I'm not going to sleep for another year and a half. And even once the newbie is sleeping through the night I'll still have one of the bigger kids getting me up a couple times a week because they hate me and don't want me to sleep. Ever.

They're adorable.