Who Has Taken Over Rowena?

I went to sleep last night at nine p.m. That's still in prime time. Before Seinfeld and Blind Date. And it wasn't just me. Sean went to sleep, too. Passed out, the both of us. We slept all night.

Actually, by the time it was near dawn, I was having a hard time sleeping, as my hip was hurting again. My hip hurts a lot. Most often after a few hours of laying on my side. Something to do with the joints stretching.

A strange thing, this pregnancy.

You spend all your life being a human being. Not just a human being. Being an individual, doing things, living your life, trying to make it meaningful and fulfilling. You're even a feminist, believing in a woman's power to do anything in life that she sets her mind to. You are in control of your will, and your body--you are in control of your destiny, even if you struggle occassionally to be that kick ass warrior queen that you're aiming to be.

And then you get pregnant and your body is not your own. And not even in ways that you expect. I mean, you hear all about it. You've read Our Bodies, Our Selves, you know what a uterus is and what it's for. But none of that reading prepares you for the wholesale change in... you.

I've always been someone who needed my full night's sleep. Eight hours, nine if I could manage it, and somehow, I've always thought that it made me more productive than those who slept six, or five, or four hourse. The way I could focus on projects or put my all into things. But now, here I am, sleeping nine or ten hours, sometimes more, and that is not enough. I simply collapse in mid afternoon. Like today. That much sleep and I tried, I really tried not to get so sleepy by noon-- even took a shower to try and wake up, but I just ended up nodding out on the couch. I wanted to get stuff done. I wanted to write or paint or something like I used to do, but there was just no help for it.

At least I managed to get a little house work done today. So bizarre. But nowhere near as wierd as the first three months, where I just did not know where I had gone. Nothing but sleeping and staring off into the emptiness that is t.v.

Now I'm just sleeping, not in that strange non-place that I was before, but I still have the knowledge that inside this body that has always been mine, just mine-- is someone who is not me. Not at all.