Bed Time (NOT bedtime!!)

So the bed is my happy place. It's my little spot of the world where I can snuggle up in my down duvet (comforter for those who don't use the King's (Queen's?) English!) and forget about all my worries and strife and drift into my subconscious. Not any more!

Before the sproglet came along I used to have running battles with my wife about who actually owned the duvet! Most nights the floor on her side of the bed had more covers than I did and the cat managed to steal the rest from me. I did however manage to steal them back most of the time. Now that she has mount Everest growing on her abdomen, I have absolutely no chance of staying warm...She hangs on to the duvet with a death grip and even the cat has no chance of curling up in a downy nest anymore. I'm at the stage where I hope for the cat to come and snuggle me to keep me warm, but that is usually met with a feline glare that somehow manages to convey "Just try it buddy and you'll see how quick the nails come out"!

Add to this the fact that she (the wife, not the cat) cannot sleep without a gale force wind blowing on her (we have a fan that I could lease out to the Springbok sky-diving team for their formation practices!) and the end result is me shivering and shaking like a cleanly shaved Polar Bear while she rolls herself up in the duvet till only the tip of her nose sticks out! And God help me if I decide to move to the couch or the spare bedroom!!
She will wake up the minute I try and sneak out and best I get my shivering ass back into my ice-block and pretend to like it.

We have developed a little routine at night when we decide to retire. The when-to-go-to-bed decision has also been taken away from me, by the way. There's no more staying up later than the wife. I have to go to bed at the same time as her, because she can't sleep unless she's somehow holding on to me while previously mentioned Mt Everest digs into my back and I have to contort into all sorts of weird and wonderful positions so that she can still spoon! So, if wifey decides she's tired at 7.30pm, that's when I have to go to bed! There are seven year olds who get to stay up later than me!! I have to ask friend's kids what happened on Grey's Anatomy because I'm not allowed to stay up late enough to watch it...
Anyway, back to the routine...So, we get into bed and wifey lies across it so that I can oil all the places she can't reach in order to somehow stem the inevitable flow of stretch marks across the ever-widening expanse that is her belly. Once this is accomplished I end up doing the hugging-the-belly thing that seems to be the only way Lesbian partners and fathers have of sharing in this miracle. This is normally followed by the self-conscious talking-to-said-belly-thing. And this conversation makes no sense to anyone. I'm sure the first thing my child is going to say is "Did you lose every single brain cell when my mother became pregnant??!!" My wife says I should sing to her, but for some or other reason the only song that pops into my head when she says this is "I like big butts and I cannot lie....."

I think I need to invest in a nursery rhyme CD!!