I *HEART* NICK (At Nite!)

I went through sort of a rough time with my second pregnancy. Now, I have read and heard of the horrible accounts of other pregnancies and am fully aware that this pales in comparison to those.

But, let me give you a little background:

David and I had been married as long as I had been pregnant. Seriously. 4YO was born exactly 9 months and 5 days after our wedding day. I was basically pregnant the minute we married. In fact, it's been a long running joke that David throws his underwear across the room, I catch them and I get pregnant. We have seriously been blessed by fertility and we know it.

So, I was still working full-time and it was rough. What I didn't really get at the time was just how out of sorts my blood sugar could get while pregnant. I had to eat every hour, on the hour, to keep from getting sick. Working in a place that did not allow snacking in your work area presented a problem for me. I would go too long without eating and my blood sugar would dip. I would, of course, get nauseous and even sick from that. Even worse, though, was the 'low blood sugar headaches' that I was plagued with. My head hurt so bad I couldn't eat. See the viscous cycle we have going on?

I was stressed-out at work, my oldest was about to start going to first grade at a new school where she didn't really know anyone. And there were so many horrible things going on in the world. This was about five years ago and there were several children kidnapped and murdered in a very short period of time. This was going on all over the country, proving just how many sickos are out there. Plus, this was less than two years after September 11th and our country was still in quite a bit of turmoil. No one felt really safe.

David and I would go to bed watching the news. I'm not sure if we did it intentionally, but we did it nonetheless. I realized the things I heard on the news were making my already tough pregnancy even worse. While I didn't make an immediate connection, I did cry myself to sleep a few nights. I had already been questioning whether I should have gotten pregnant so soon after our marriage, while I still had to work. I was questioning my health and how the headaches and my overall mood were affecting the baby. Then, I also started questioning myself and David and why we would even want to bring another innocent child into this world with all the bad things that are happening.

Funny...not once did I question my hormone levels and realize that they were magnifying everything anyhow....

I put a stop to the news at night and started watching Nick at Nite. (Coincidently, my doctor saw the toll my job was taking on my pregnancy and took me off work for the rest of it.) I started falling asleep to old episodes of 'Roseanne' and 'The Cosby Show.' No matter what thoughts were running through my mind when I finally got to bed, they were replaced by whether or not Theo would do his homework or if DJ from 'Full House' would learn to put on makeup without looking like a 'streetwalker.'

I am still convinced that it's just not possible to have a bad dream when you fall asleep to Nick at Nite. In fact, I have a little TV in 1YO's room and it was on Nick at Nite every night of the first few months of her life. You know those months that are all a blur now because day and night all sort of blend together? It was really helpful to just leave the TV on and have just the right amount of light and noise. I would sit in my recliner nursing my baby and watching those old shows over and over. I knew the whole lineup and the fact that they changed it often. It was especially helpful when 1YO was diagnosed with reflux and I had to hold her up for so long after each feeding. I'm not really sure what I would have done had I not had Nick right there with me!

I'm thinking about Nick a lot right now, because David is on his way to pick up his nephews and will be gone a few days. I won't be alone, by any means. But, I won't have David sleeping beside me either.

At least I know I can count on Nick to get me through it.