Bizarre Pregnancy Symptom #91

My hands have been falling asleep at night.

Dead-asleep, really painful, pins and needles. Enough to wake me up numerous times during that precious period while I should be slumbering.
The first night it happened, I thought it was a fluke. I googled "pregnancy hands falling asleep" and learned that many pregnant women get mild carpal tunnel syndrome at the end of pregnancy. The excess fluid compresses the tunnels in her wrists and presents as achy wrists and the irritatingly painful "pins and needles".

But it has happened many nights since then. Not every night, thanks be to God, but enough to really start to bother me. I have to actually get out of bed and shake, shake, shake my hands while walking around the house, trying to get the blood to go back to where it is supposed to go. I would just walk around the bedroom, but my athletic and adrenaline-infused husband gets hyper-vigilant at night about protecting his home and family. A few times I have been checking on the kids or getting them water, and I- a 6-foot-tall shadow in the dark- will give him such a start that he will nearly punch me square in the face. So now, I scuff the carpet or hum while I walk around to let him know that I am not an intruder.

So in addition to my constant feeling of having to go potty at night, I am joyfully awakened numerous other times, feeling as though my fingers shall surely explode from pressure.

Ah, pregnancy.