Jaws of Steel

The universe is fucking with me.

 

I broke my night guard last week (because no plastic can withstand my stress-induced teeth clenching) and last night Freddie slept through the night for the FIRST TIME EVER.  And I hope to God it’s a trend, but it probably isn’t because I am not that lucky.  I did not sleep through the night because I kept waking to a severe pain in my jaw and teeth because of the clenching and grinding that is no longer prevented by a night guard.

 

That baby is still winning the sleep wars.  He’ll probably stop sleeping through the night as soon as I can sleep comfortably again.

 

I went to the dentist to get a new night guard and was summarily informed that I was now on “The List.”  That is, my dentist has a list of “maybe eight” patients who have broken two or more night guards.  Coincidentally (not), the last time I broke a night guard ($300!) was also during tax season.  The list exists because I have a new source of potential doom to worry about: sleep disorders.  Sleep apnea doesn’t just affect obese middle-age men who snore like freight trains; the stealth sleep apneaics are young, fit women in their thirties who don’t snore and who repeatedly break night guards. 

 

Huh.  That’s me.

 

So I might regularly stop breathing at night.  Or I might just be unreasonably stressed.  Hard to tell at this point, especially since I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in years.  It will probably take months of Freddie and the others sleeping through the night before I finally do – my body is trained to wake fully at the softest of sounds.  Plus, my super barf hearing is ALWAYS on high alert.

 

I’ll get my new night guard in a few weeks because this time the dentist wants to go for the full-jaw big guns instead of the two-front-teeth coughdrop-sized NTI I had (and broke twice) before.  In the meantime, I’ll be wearing a sports mouth guard for maximum fear factor when I get up with Freddie in the middle of the night (come on, we all know he won’t sleep through the night again until he’s four).  I imagine him screaming even louder when I pick him up with an overstuffed mouth full of molded plastic in some garish color.

 

The best part will be leaning over to Tony and kissing him goodnight with whatever mouth contraption I have to sport to keep from grinding my teeth to powder each night.  It’s almost allergy season, though, so soon he’ll have weepy, red eyes and a BreatheRight strip on his nose.  I tell you, as we move toward middle age, we just get sexier and sexier.