The Five-Year Pillow Fight

Underneath his stubbly, gruff exterior, Ruyman has a softer side. It’s a side that loves pillows. In order to sleep comfortably, he needs four of them: one for his head, one for his right arm, one for cuddling if I’m inaccessible, and one back-up pillow to replace any that fall off the bed in the night. Throw in the plastic mask and four-foot hose of the CPAP machine that keeps him from suffocating himself in his sleep and Ruyman’s side of the bed is more like Ruyman’s two-thirds of the bed.

Adjusting to these sleeping arrangements as a newly-wed, though it was just the pillows back then, was a challenge for me. I was a bed-sharing virgin and used to sleeping diagonally on a queen-sized bed for one. Moreover, I’m a kicking, thrashing insomniac and Ruyman is a “princess-and-the-pea” type sleeper who becomes near-homicidal when unexpectedly awoken. Coughing, excessive shifting, and (heaven forbid!) midnight toilet flushing became acts of almost suicidal stupidity after we were married. 

It wasn’t always me waking up Ruyman, though. I remember one night I was roughly roused by two hands yanking the pillow from under my head. After my skull stopped bouncing on our very full full-sized mattress, I looked over to see my husband clutching my pillow in a death grip any boa constrictor would be proud of. Pillows three and four hit the floor earlier in the night and he was going with stock on hand. By then I knew better than to wake him, so I spent a sleepless night staring at the ceiling, wondering if this was going to be a habit. (It’s a good thing newly-weds love each other so ridiculously or more of them would end up dead in acts of sleep-deprived violence.)

With the addition of the CPAP machine and a queen-sized mattress, things gradually improved. It turns out when Ruyman isn’t being smothered in his sleep by his own brain, he’s more docile on waking. Still, the pillow problem persists, though with a new twist. Thanks to pregnancy, I’ve stopped taking pillow theft lying down, so to speak.

When your torso size triples in a matter of months, sleeping suddenly becomes very uncomfortable, if not impossible. Gravity, no longer a consistent force but a selectively malevolent spirit, pulls harder on your belly, which doesn’t quite droop on the mattress when you lay on your side. Instead, it dangles awkwardly in mid-air like a water balloon on the edge of a table. The excess stretching causes your skin to burn, your hips to ache, and your baby to kick unmercifully at your ribs, which already feel bruised from the inside out. Throw in the three-a-night potty breaks and you hit a level of insomnia usually reserved for Navy Seal recruits. 

At times like this, I find the Bare Naked Ladies song “Who Needs Sleep? (No, You’re Never Going to Get It)” on replay in my mind like a sadistic lullaby. In daylight, when well-meaning people see my burgeoning belly and say, “Enjoy your rest now cuz when that baby comes, you won’t get any shut-eye again for another 18 years!” I cheerfully envision snapping their windpipes with bolt cutters. (Like I said, sleep deprivation - it’s a killer.)

The only thing that helps at all is pillows - lots of them. Pillows wedged under your belly. Pillows jammed between your knees. Pillows snuggled tight in your arms. Pillows propped under your head to suppress the ever-present heartburn. Pillows pressed into your ears to drown out the sound of your own snoring. Pillows. Everywhere.

And when Ruyman’s hands come sneaking up to yank one away, well, I growl and yank back. He’s not the scariest one in the bed anymore - not by a long shot.