After months of internal dialogue around the subject, I purchased a weighted blanket. And let me tell you, that thing is 15 pounds of my new best friend.

For awhile, the only weighted blankets I found on the market were pretty expensive. And ugly. I can think of several things I’d rather spend a couple hundred bucks on than an aesthetically disagreeable layer of bedding. The weighted blanket trend must’ve caught on though, because Amazon now offers several options for as low as $30. I went with a middle-of-the-line model in crisp white. It’s simple, modern and clean.

I slept under my new weighted blanket for the first time last night, and Oh my lord. God bless, god bless. My sleep was deep, rich and undisturbed. I’ll admit there might be a placebo effect going on, but whatever. I’ll take it.

This morning, I’m thinking about the why behind weighted blankets. There must be a physiological reason they produce more restful sleep—or at least, why manufacturers can get away with marketing that.

My first thought is that it takes you back to the womb. A warm, gentle pressure that embraces and calms, like a wooooosh of a hug applied evenly around your entire body.

It’s why we swaddle infants in their first days of life—a means of comfort and reassurance in the big scary world that is decidedly not the womb. We swaddle them to hush their startle reflexes during sleep, the involuntary thrashing and flailing of limbs. We swaddle them so they don’t scratch their faces as they rest. Pretty much, we swaddle them to save them from themselves.

Last night, my muscles didn’t spasm, my feet didn’t get cold. The anxiety that keeps itself on simmer in those hours mostly dissolved. I slept. Through the night. And the weight of the things that typically wake me up quietly grew free.