The Red Dress Club has another great prompt this week.

“Your assignment is to write a short piece – fiction, non-fiction, poetry, whatevs – in which each sentence starts with a the next letter of the alphabet. Starting with “A.” So, yes, your finished product will consist of 26 sentences.”

I chose non-fiction, and to write about my night.  I’ve been looking forward to this prompt all week.  This was such a fun exercise… challenging, and interesting to think of different ways to begin sentences other than with “I” or “my” all the time.  I think the final product is quite lovely.

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Another day is gone.  Breathless, I sit here through a contraction.  Can’t seem to make it through the night any more, as it is only 5am.  Don’t worry, I don’t think I’m in labor – I just can’t sleep through some of them.  Every night, I go to bed hoping for more than three or four hours of sleep.  For the past few weeks, I’m lucky to get that much.  General consent is that the days before delivery are trying to prepare you for sleepless nights with a newborn.  Heaven knows I hate hearing that, I got plenty of sleep when Ronan was a newborn.  I don’t think it’s just my body, either.  Just as I am cursed with the need to get up and pee, my mind starts racing.  Kicked in the cerebrum, I can’t shut off all the thoughts about what I need to do, what is coming, what happens next.  Laying in bed with my eyes closed but my thoughts open, I try instead to see peaceful thoughts.  My consciousness guides my restless head towards my birth, and visualizing a perfect delivery.  Never mind that things don’t always go as planned.  Often I have read of other mothers who’ve used positive visualization and the mind-body connection to create the experience they had only dreamed of.  Perhaps I will be one of those lucky mothers.  Quite funny, however, that I never get to dream of my experience as I never seem to actually be sleeping.  Reality sets in rather quickly, and I begin to realize that this roller-coaster can’t be slowed down.  Soon, there will be another child in our house.  This family of three is quickly becoming a family of four.  Under no circumstances had I previously been able to imagine anything other than what is, and soon it will be what was.  Very soon, a little girl will join our household, and our love will grow to encompass her.  What an amazing thing to behold.  X-rays of our hearts would show no change, but there is nothing around us that WONT change.  Yes, life will go on as before.  Zero chance that we wont be living it just a little fuller, though.