The Snoogle

The snoogle is back. And so is my love-hate relationship with it. I actually remember hating it when I first started using it during my last pregnancy (the pillow part was too puffy for my head/neck) and in the end loving it more than I could ever imagine, but that may have been putting too rosy a spin on it...


For those of you who don't know, a snoogle is an elongated "C" shaped body pillow meant to help you sleep on your side. You can sleep facing it or with your back to it (so it's spooning you!) but in either case there is a part under your head, a part between your knees and a part along your body. It's helpful because pregnant woman aren't meant to sleep on their stomach, for obvious reason, and they're also not meant to sleep on their back, because the uterus can put too much pressure on the vena cava causing problems for the mom and the baby. So we're left with our sides. And if I remember correctly, we're really only supposed to sleep on one of our sides, but I think that's less important overall.

I've spent the last several weeks trying to train myself to sleep on my side, but trying to train yourself to do something while you're asleep is just as hard as it sounds.... So I broke out the snoogle and brought it into bed last night. It is mighty comfortable to sleep with. And if I slept soundly throughout the night, I would have no complaints about it at all, but alas, what pregnant lady do you know who sleeps through the night? And when you're NOT sleeping, the snoogle can be sort of a pain.

First of all, if you sleep with it between you and your partner, it's like there's a wall separating you from your loved one and that can be sad. But if you sleep with it on the "outside" of the bed then getting out of bed to pee (which I typically do twice a night these days) involves an action akin to pole-vaulting a whale over a wall, without a pole, and you're the whale....

Similarly, turning over, from the snoogle-facing position to the snoogle-spooning-you position takes more strength and dexterity than I have on a good day, and certainly 10x that of most sleeping pregnant women.

So what to do? I don't know. Likely I will keep up the good fight and try to really sleep through the night because if I do, I can just love the snoogle instead of love-hate it.