Many evenings I fall asleep on the sofa instead of making it to bed, and Edward has to wake me up, which is sometimes a battle--if he catches me at the wrong moment of sleep, the unawake me will say, irritatedly, "OK, OK, I know!" & the one time he tried to wake me several times and finally gave up, I woke up in a sleep fog, stumbled to bed at 3AM, and said, heartbroken, "Why didn't you wake me up?" It was as though we'd planned a trip together and I hadn't shown up and he'd gone ahead without me. (Or so the sleep-drunk me felt. In the morning, I, like Edward, had no idea what had got into me.)

Most times, though, it's relatively easy: he calls my name, and as my brain starts rising to the surface of sleep, ready to break through into wakefulness, I think: Be careful of the baby who's asleep next to you. And then the dream and the baby evaporate. The dream-baby has never been Gus or Matilda, though the phenomenon started after Gus was born--that is, after I knew what it was like to have a baby asleep on me.

Tomorrow is the 3rd anniversary of my first child's death. It's the 1st time I haven't been pregnant on the day. We're still feeling around for what to do, but I imagine it will include the ocean.