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Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Speaking of weird dreams...

Eric just told me a dream he had 2 nights ago. Here it is almost verbatim as he told it to me:

    Two night ago, Eric dreamt that he was pregnant. He went into labor and had a sudden realization that he hadn’t prepared for it and didn’t know what to do. He was sitting there, realizing he was having contractions, and then he thought “I just need to remember what Rixa taught me—to trust my body.” He closed his eyes and visualized giving birth, taking a deep breath and letting his body relax into the contractions. Soon after, he had one baby, and then another and then another until he had six boys. Afterwards he went to look at the babies. They were lying in these individual cots. They all looked kind of like Beaker from The Muppets with these really long foreheads and a unibrow.
    That beats any of my pregnancy dreams by far! Most of mine, interestingly enough, consisted of me laboring alone, giving birth kneeling or squatting, cradling my baby's head as it emerged, and catching her myself. More true to life, but much less dramatic than Eric's dream. Oh, and my babies usually talked immediately after they were born.

    Here is one of my favorite birth dreams, taken from my journal. It's very spunky:
    For some reason I couldn’t give birth at home, not for health reasons but something else. I think there must have been some sort of disaster and that’s why I couldn’t get home. Anyway there was another woman in labor too and a nurse was leading us to our rooms. It was a very cold, sterile, empty place. I knew I’d be just fine and just wanted to keep the nurse away from me. The other woman was freaking out—drama queen. Anyway I was fine by myself. I had to poop—and knew that probably meant baby was on the way—so I went to the bathroom. I sat on the toilet and my baby was crowning. I supported her head as it slowly emerged with my right hand. I felt her slippery, wrinkly head. Very cool. I then used both hands to catch the rest of her body (I didn’t want her to fall into the toilet!). I cuddled her naked body against my own naked chest and, to show the horrified nurse that I was just fine, thank you, I got off the toilet.
    What is the strangest pregnancy dream you have had?

    8 comments:

    1. While pregnant with my first child I had a dream that I was asleep and when I woke up my baby had been born but I had no recollection of the birth. The baby was blonde with green eyes and was huge, a walking, talking toddler.

      (Interestingly enough my second child was a blonde-haired, green-eyed 11lb baby boy born via cesarean and I have no memory of his birth)

      During my second pregnancy I had a dream about giving birth to twin girls with strawberry blonde hair in my friend's van. I became convinced I was having twins after that dream.

      (My third pregnancy resulted in identical blonde twin girls but they were not born in my friend's van, thankfully.)

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    2. Seeing as how I have never been pregnant, I haven't had any pregnant dreams yet. However, last week I did have a dream that I was handed my baby (kind of stork like: "here, this is your baby"), and I had to ask who the father was. Pretty much a crazy dream where I went from being single to mother in a matter of minutes.

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    3. In one dream, I was salting my big pregnant belly (I guess like a hard-boiled egg?!) and in another, my baby was taken out, looked at, and put back in... almost like the removable tray of a vacuum or something. Strange!

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    4. I don't really remember many of my dreams, but I do know a recurring theme during my 1st pregnancy was that I gave birth to a daughter, who always ended up being my little sister. I think this is because I was 11 when she was born, and she was my only experience with a newborn...This pregnancy I only remember ever having two "baby dreams," and I didn't remember anything except in one it was twins, and in the other, a boy (which it was!).

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    5. Being in a high risk of infertility group, I usually dream of being pregnant and having an empty belly - in the end I give birth to ashes or a plastic baby doll.

      I guess it's my way of handling stress :) The only interesting thing is, I always give birth alone - kind of surprising, considering I come from a country where homebirths are less than 1% of all births and they are like banned from the public discussion :P

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    6. I used to have many dreams where I would find babies instead of give birth (like, oh, there's a baby on the beach! it's mine!). In the last year or two I've had birth dreams. I don't have the sensations, but I look down and see my big belly. I remember one very clearly where I gave birth in my bed, on my own. I had the baby but the cord was short, so the baby was hanging out between my legs. I didn't know if it was a boy or girl, but instead of visually checking I reached down between the legs with my hand and felt that it was a boy, and when I saw him he looked about 9 months old and exactly like my husband. I'm sure these will get a lot weirder once I'm actually pregnant!

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    7. With my first I had a dream that I gave birth to twin wolf pups and I was so proud and everyone was coming in to see them and oh and ah over them. It was totally normal in the dream but when I woke up I found it disturbing. With my second I had two different medical dreams where things happened (that I didn't want) and I found out his sex both times and was disappointed in my dreams to find out when I wanted to keep it a surprise. I only had dreams of my baby crowning while I was kneeling alone with my third. This time I had one dream where the baby just came out and was lying on my thigh, very small but a perfect boy. I also had another dream where I was wearing an older baby in my Mei Tai and someone came up saying what a cute girl and I corrected that he was a boy. So I guess I am having a boy again. :) Wendi

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    8. Three of them:

      First, when pregnant with my son, before I knew he was a son, I dreamt I was with my husband and we had a 5 year old blonde boy. It was apparently family pizza night and we were getting drinks together, I asked the boy what he wanted to drink and he proudly yelled, "TEA!"

      Second, I had this dream or variations of it a lot when pregnant with my son: I had the baby but when it came out it was a kitten and/or puppy and then all of a sudden there were 8 of them instead of just one and I had to run around putting bowls of milk on the floor and trying to keep them all from running off somewhere that wasn't safe. This was very upsetting in the dream.

      Third: This dream while pregnant with my daughter, who if a girl we had planned on naming Rileigh: Little girl: "Don't name me Rileigh" Me: "But why, it's such a pretty name." Little girl: "PLEASE! Don't name me that, I really HATE that name!" Ummm...soo needless to say, when she was born, a girl, we named her Logan instead...she seems happy with it. =)

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