First off, let me say that Gilly’s pregnancy has been remarkably uneventful up to this point (knocking on wood…). For that we are both extremely grateful. That said, if there’s one thing so far that has been an issue for her, it’s been her transition from sleeping on her back to sleeping on her sides. For those of you who might not know, obstetricians recommend these days that a pregnant woman sleep only on her sides. When a pregnant woman sleeps on her back, the baby can put added pressure on the inferior vena cava, which is the large vein that returns blood to the heart from the feet and legs. It is thought that pressure on this vein puts added strain on the heart and can increase the severity of circulation-related pregnancy symptoms like varicose veins.

Anyway, now that Gilly is sleeping exclusively on her sides, her hips tend to get really achy as the night progresses. This past weekend, in addition to sore hips, Gilly was suffering from a nagging cough. At 4:30 am on Sunday, she just couldn’t sleep anymore and sat up in bed feeling miserable. In an effort to be supportive, I asked her what I could do to make her more comfortable. Exhausted and uncomfortable she said, “I don’t know. Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.” Well when you say that to a man, he’s gotta come up with some solutions, right? A cough drop was an easy fix to the coughing issue, but what to do about aching hips… Being a typical male (a half-asleep male, mind you), I decided in my infinite wisdom that “walking it off” would help the achy hip issue…

So there we were at 4:30 am in pajamas and fleece pullovers, heading out the door with the dog in tow (hey, if we have to go, so does the dog, right?). As the chilly early morning air finally woke up my brain, I realized how truly bizarre my idea was. I was sure that Gilly thought I had lost it and was just complying out of sheer exhaustion. And Amber… well OK, she was actually pretty stoked. As far as she’s concerned there’s never a bad time for a walk.

Frantically trying to rationalize my decision, I remembered a scene from the movie As Good as It Gets when Jack Nicholson’s character Melvin visits Helen Hunt’s character Carol at 4 am to discuss the state of their relationship. The exchange goes like this:

Melvin: It feels a little confined here. Let’s take a walk.

Carol: See. It’s four in the morning. A walk sounds a little screwy to me, if you don’t mind.

Melvin: If you need an excuse, there’s a bakery on the corner. There’s a shot it’ll open soon — that way we’re not screwy — we’re just two people who like warm rolls.

Then it dawned on me. Just down the street there was a donut shop. There was a good chance that they’d be open, so doing my best Jack Nicholson impression, which isn’t all that good, especially at 4:30 am, I told Gilly that if we headed to the donut shop, going for a walk wouldn’t be that weird. We’d just be two people who liked warm donuts (I couldn’t really think of anything to explain away the fact that we were still in our pajamas though).

After a short hike down Amador Valley Blvd., we discovered that the donut shop was indeed open, so we each enjoyed a fresh donut (maple old-fashioned for Gilly, maple cake for me) and headed back home. Remarkably, the walk did seem to ease the aching in Gilly’s hips a bit, and we were both able to go back to sleep for another 4 hours.

In the end, the only one who took issue with my 4:30 am walk idea was Amber. She was mad that she didn’t get a donut.

Categories: Anecdotes
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