Tuesday, April 15, 2014

The messed up dreams of a pregnant woman


My friend tells me that my more heart wrenching posts should come with a “tissue warning.” Well, this post comes with a “seriously messed up sh*t warning” because that’s the only accurate description for what a pregnant woman dreams about at night.


Don’t you hate it when people just abandon shopping carts in parking spaces at grocery stores? I mean, how hard is it to take them to the cart return? Lazy jerks.

Yeah… um, I’m that jerk. But it’s not because I’m lazy. Here’s why.

After Quinn was born, I found myself paralyzed in the parking lot after our first grocery store outing together. I had just loaded all the bags into the car and snapped in Q’s infant seat. Seized with anxiety, I gripped the handle of the shopping car unsure of what to do next. The cart return was clear across the parking lot, and I didn’t want to leave my teeny tiny baby alone in the car for even a moment. Even though logic told me he would be fine in the car for 90 seconds, the knot in my stomach screamed otherwise. So I hooked the wheels of the shopping cart over the curb next to a nearby parking space and left. I’m that jerk.

This irrational fear of leaving Q alone in the car has been with me ever since, resulting in a horrifically eff-ed up dream when I was pregnant for Reid. In the dream, I left Q in the car to return the shopping cart, but when I came back, my car was gone. I started panicking. I couldn’t breathe. I grabbed the nearest stranger and tried to choke out the right words to tell her my baby was gone. Instantly, the parking lot was swarmed with cop cars and flashing lights. Then suddenly, it was dark outside and I knew a lot of time had passed and he’d been missing all day. Then someone said they found the car on the other side of the parking lot. (Wait, it took that long to find the car in the same parking lot??? Yes, to review, this is an eff-ed up dream.) Screaming Quinn’s name, I ran toward the car. I could see Q’s shape still strapped into his toddler seat… but I knew what happens when a child has been left in a hot car all day… and I knew what I was about to find…

And then I jolted awake before I saw what I can’t un-see. Just like in a movie, I sprang upright in bed, panicked, sweaty and gasping for air. One arm wrapped around my very pregnant belly, I lunged for the video monitor with the other arm. I needed to see him!

I watched Quinn sleep on the monitor for a few moments, just barely able to make out the steady rise and fall of his chest. I let the rhythmic sound of his noise machine come through the monitor and slowly soothe me until I could breathe normally again.

And then I let the tears fall.

But my hell was not over yet. The following night, I dreamt that Q and I were broadsided by another car. As our SUV spun in circles, I could feel Reid’s spirit leaving my body and I just knew I’d lost the baby. I yelled for Quinn, but I couldn’t hear him over the squeal of brakes and tires and the shattering of glass. The spinning motion kept my head bolted to the seat, and I couldn’t turn my neck to look back at him. I prayed to God to please let him be okay… but if He was going to take both of my babies, He had to take me, too.

This time I jolted awake – again, panicked and sweaty – before our car even stopped spinning, so I have no idea how the dream would have ended. But I don’t think I want to know.

Yo, pregnancy dreams are no joke, people. Most of my preggo dreams were just a bit weirder than normal, but a few, like these two, were downright morbid. But before you shove me onto a bus to Crazy Town, it’s not just me. Ask any mom, and she will tell you that she had some crazy-ass dreams when she was pregnant, too.

When my aunt was pregnant, she dreamt that she kept the baby in the toilet tank. Yes, you read that right. In her dream, the baby slept in the back of the toilet. Hmmm, maybe it’s because I had that story and this blog post on my mind when I went to sleep last night, but last night I dreamt that I put Reid to bed… in a fish tank. And he was fine, breathing normally and sleeping there under the water with the fish, totally cool. And I’m not even preggers anymore!


What’s the nuttiest, eff-ed up dream you had while preggers? Come on, make me feel less "cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs."