LJ Idol Survivor: Challenge 9: Uncomfortably Numb

[flipflop_diva]

The cry comes at two in the morning. Almost without fail. My eyes flutter open as I wait to see if it will continue, holding my breath, anxiety settling into my chest.

A beat passes. Then another. And another. Pure, blissful silence.

I release the breath I’m holding and let myself sink back into my pillow, my eyes falling shut again.

Another cry breaks the sweet silence. This one louder, more urgent.

Oh, no.

I wait to see if this, too, will pass. Hopeful but nervous.

But it is not to be. The cries are getting louder, followed by the sound of rustling and a few clunks and thumps. The unmistakable signs the two-year-old is climbing out of her toddler bed and about to appear in the doorway to our room.

Before I can decide if I want to get out of bed to greet her, David is pushing back the covers and getting up instead. I sigh and roll over on to my back and fix up the pillows next to me in the center of the bed.

A few moments later and David is back with Ellie in his arms. On her right foot is still the hot pink tennis shoe she insisted on sleeping in a few hours earlier (her new shoes that are still a little too big for her to wear to daycare). In her arms is a giant Mickey Mouse that’s about half the size she is.

David puts her down in the middle of the bed, her head on the pillow I set up for her. I cover her with a blanket.

David gets back in bed. Ellie seems content. I lay back down myself and start to close my eyes.

Oops, no, Ellie is moving. She’s inching closer to me and rolling over and squirming all around, and okay, now she has her head on half of my pillow and her little body is pressed up right next to me, her elbow poking me in the boob.

I sigh and move over to the edge of the bed another half inch or so, just to have a little space. I wrap her little arm back around Mickey Mouse, and I hope maybe she will stay in place for even just an hour or two so I can get some sleep.

But nope. She’s moving closer again, snuggling up against me.

I give in. I roll over on my back with my left arm around her. She stops wiggling, and I think maybe this is it. Maybe this is the way we can sleep tonight.

Maybe. Hopefully. Even an hour will do.

--

I’m not sure how much time has passed when my eyes open again. Probably not much. It’s still pitch black outside the windows. Ellie is breathing steadily, her whole body still pressed up against me. On the other side of the bed, David is spread out, sleeping soundly, no worries in the world about a little girl stealing his pillow and his space.

I’m sweltering, even though the fan is on above us and it’s maybe forty degrees outside at most. But it’s not the sweat I am worried about. My arm, still tucked under Ellie, feels dead.

Somewhere in the short time we’ve been asleep, it has lost all feeling. I try to move my fingers, but wonder if they are actually doing anything. I wonder if there is any blood moving down my veins. I wonder if they’ve ever had to amputate an arm because it went numb under the head of a sleeping child.

I contemplate what to do. I can’t stay as I am. I’m pretty sure it’s not good for my arm. It’s also not comfortable. At all. Except if I move, even a little, I risk waking a sleeping child, a child who, upon waking, will probably cry and burrow even closer and might kick or elbow or do something else unintentionally that will cause more uncomfortableness.

It’s a conundrum.

I lay there in the dark trying to remember what life was like before Ellie, when I didn’t have to worry about being woken up in the middle of the night or sharing my pillow with another person. Sometimes David would hog the blankets and then claim in the morning he did no such thing, but was a minor inconvenience.

I finally decide that I need to take action. It just can’t wait any longer.

There’s not much room between me and the edge of the bed — maybe an inch if I’m lucky. But I shift over anyway, balancing on the little space I have left. Then I try to pull my arm out, ever so slowly, from under Ellie’s head.

Of course, my arm is dead and does not want to move, so this poses a different sort of problem. I use my other hand to help it out.

Ellie stirs and fidgets when I get close to freeing myself, and as suspected, she rolls over so she is once again pressed up against me. But her movement allows my arm to come fully free. Still dead but free.

I hold my dead arm up with my still-alive hand and cringe at how floppy it is. It would be funny if I didn’t know what was coming.

And yup, here it comes. The tiny pinpricks of sensation returning. First not too bad but soon evolving into searing pain as feeling starts to return everywhere.

I shake my arm in the air, trying not to disturb anyone, gritting my teeth, waiting for the pain to go away.

Finally I can lay my arm down, the sensation back to just a mere annoyance, but the real question remains — how to sleep without risking a repeat of this whole occurrence? I finally decide to roll over, facing away from Ellie, curled up on my tiny little section of the mattress. One wrong breath and I’m going to be laying on the carpet instead. Though I suppose that might be better than what I just went through.

I close my eyes. I feel Ellie move behind me, pushing herself even closer to me (although I don’t know how that’s possible).

I move one of my hands to my belly, where her unborn brother is doing whatever he is doing, still too small for me to feel him kicking and moving yet. These are the moments when I wonder what we were thinking when we decided to have a second one. Do I not ever want to sleep again? Do I not envy my single friends and how they have a whole bed to themselves?

Behind me, Ellie begins to snore just slightly. It’s soft and cute, and I picture her little face as she sleeps. In a few hours, she will wake up — probably at least a half hour before my alarm goes off — and she will kick me as she stretches her legs. Then she will sit up and call my name and ask if she can watch “Mickey Mouse’s Clubhouse.” And I will say yes because I love her, and I will turn on her show and she’ll cuddle up in my arms for a few minutes as we watch it together and she points out Mickey and Minnie and Donald and Daisy and Goofy (and Pluto, who she calls Alexa, because he looks like our dog), and I will remember why all this is worth it — numb arms and tiny slices of mattresses and all.










Non-fiction. Pretty much life every day lately! We would have left her in her crib longer, but she learned to climb out of it and throw herself off the side so we were worried she was going to hurt herself. Someday, she will hopefully go back to sleeping through the night in her own room :)




Thank you for reading! This was written for a new adventure in the therealljidol world — Survivor Idol! You can see and vote for all the entries here. Voting runs through 8p EST Monday, February 1!

We are now fighting for individual immunity so I would appreciate if you could vote for me if you liked my work!

Comments

[gunwithoutmusic]

I love this way of looking at things - the discomfort (and I know that feeling all too well of a "sleeping" limb coming back to life), the lack of sleep, the annoyance, everything just melting away with the knowledge that it's all worth it. You're so good at these little "slice of life" stories, taking something that I'm sure every parent knows all too well and breathing extra life into it, giving even these repeat occurrences the respect that they deserve, showing that even the smallest moments can be truly special. Great job this week :)