me and my snoogle pillow

Snoogle used to be “our” word. A kind of extension of snuggling. A snuggle that has more oomph and a longer duration.

Recently, I found out that a Snoogle is also a popular pregnancy sleep aid, specifically, a pillow that goes under your head, snakes around your body, and comes up between your knees. To help with that side-sleeping that all the pregnancy books swear you have to do from about week 18 or 20 forward, even though all of our doctors (well, mine, and the gals in swim class I’ve discussed this with) say that it’s not the end of the world if you end up sleeping on your back.

It’s probably just a ploy to get pregnant ladies to spend more money — fear-based shopping — but I have had at least two friends tell me they swear/swore by the thing, and I don’t have the guts to keep sleeping on my back (after a book tells you that back sleeping will cut off blood and oxygen to your uterus and your baby will suffocate, you can’t really put that image aside)… and since I’m not normally a side-sleeper, my neck and shoulders have been killing me no matter how I arrange our current stock of pillows.

So, I bought one.

The store we went to didn’t have any covers available. I guess I could just sleep with the naked pillow. But it’s kinda scratchy. So for now, I try to wrap the thing in a flannel sheet, which should be straightforward, except that it isn’t.

I put the big curvy pillow down, put the sheet around it, and then struggle for the next 20 minutes or so to get my head on, my arm under, the tail up between my knees, and an extra pillow wedged under my growing belly for support in that one gap it leaves, while I somehow impede my own progress by laying on various parts of the flannel sheet. (Why I didn’t just buy the new-model, longer Snoogle? I don’t know. It looked claustrophobic.)

Once I’m in, I’m in though. Snug as a bug in a… and then poor Scott gets to snuggle me around the Snoogle. As best he can.