Pregnant at least 13 weeks. The doctor tells me she doesn’t think… “Well, I suspect your sac is light.” I ask that my husband come in to see. We just want to see all these moments, every chance we can. “No,” she says, not a good idea. But I feel it. There’s something here. I point to a knot in my stomach, like a hard ball. There are too many nurses around me. I never get to see the ultrasound screen.
One nurse with dark hair sees my razor burn crotch, coming in late, and says, WHAT’S THAT?! as if that’s the reason I’m there. As if that is what we’re dealing with. I get angry, tell her to shut the fuck up. She yells back at me. Then the doctor interrupts. I still can’t believe they won’t let Phil in.
The doctor stops looking, sits back, leaning on the radiator as she says something. I say, stillbirth? No, not that. Then she says she wasn’t going to tell me the sex, a boy, but I won’t be able to have him. “I’m that far along?!” I say.
“Oh, yes, yes,” she says. “But, he won’t survive the seasons.”
I get very frustrated with her, yell that I don’t need metaphors. I need ENGLISH. She has red hair, short, straight, with ugly clear, wide glasses. The white coat. She says, “He’s gotten good at mimicking this stage of pregnancy but won’t survive the rest of it.” She keeps saying “I’ll need to patch,” which to me sounds like D&R. I still don’t understand, tell her I once had a blighted ovum. Is that this? No, there is a heartbeat. There is a sex. She finally says she thinks it’s neo-natal SOMETHING. And I feel like it’s a type of cancer. She says they’ll biopsy the fetus once he’s out. I wake up. Dream over.
I try to figure out if I’m pregnant at all. I’m not. I remember the life I’m living, with my children running around downstairs, I hear them. My lower back hurts, like I’ll have my period soon. I don’t remember what day it is, what the schedule is. I just know that today will feel different, somehow.
I feel angry, boxed out, like someone’s not doing a good job explaining things to me, no matter how many times I ask. I want a second opinion on something, but I can’t figure out what it is. Why do we have dreams like this? What’s it telling me?
The dream just before this one? I was working in some office, on a computer. Movies kept cropping up on my screen, and as much as I tried, I couldn’t figure out a way to mute them without pressing three different buttons. I worried I’d get fired, that they’d think I was goofing off.
Before that, I was in an office that burned down, the whole thing, all the computers. Then I’m at the headhunter being placed for a job I don’t even want. It’s as if I were stuck with a bunch of things I didn’t want, but the one thing I wanted I couldn’t have.
I can’t remember ever yelling at someone the way I did at that nurse who was commenting on my crotch. Asshole never had red ingrown hairs of her own, clearly not a redhead.
September 17, 2010 at 2:53 am
I HATE having messed up dreams that still have me freaked out when I wake up.
September 17, 2010 at 5:56 am
Been getting gored by bulls a lot in my dreams lately. What does it mean?
September 17, 2010 at 8:44 am
Great post, Stephanie. I hate how when I have weird dreams/nightmares like this it puts me in a funk for the whole entire day.
September 17, 2010 at 10:34 am
Wow! I thought I was the only one who has such vivid, weird, unexplainable and frustrating dreams and, yes, they do put me in a funky mood sometimes too. Thanks for sharing.
September 17, 2010 at 10:52 am
Thanks a lot Stephanie Klein, I’m sitting here crying over my burnt toast.
September 17, 2010 at 11:17 am
God, I hate bad dreams. I had a doozy last night – my sweet, ancient aunt was in a wheelchair, she was falling out of it, so I caught her, and then she died in my arms. We didn’t call the paramedics for a long time because she has a DNR and it didn’t seem the right thing to do. Finally, we called the ambulance, and they put her on a stretcher to take her out – the blanket covering her face got pulled down, and there was the face of a stranger staring at me in a totally perplexed way, like ‘why did you do this to me?’ I may never sleep again.
September 18, 2010 at 12:11 pm
Okay… here’s my interpretation… despite having two beautiful children, somewhere inside you, you’re thinking you might want another. And if you dare to take that chance, something bad will happen before the baby is even born. You’ve been through so much with the twins coming early, Phil’s illness. I think you’re predisposed to expecting the worst these days.
And I think that’s a pretty normal way to feel.
September 18, 2010 at 10:32 pm
People with nightmares need 5 element acupuncture and some herbs.
September 19, 2010 at 6:47 pm
Whatever it means, sucks. Bad dreams drag the air out of ya for a day or three, until happier things take their place. I choose to ignore them, unless they are recurring dreams. Blame it on some bad tex mex!
September 20, 2010 at 4:45 pm
I recently dreamed that I gave birth to a Lhasa Apso-I just started crying and said “But I thought I was having a baby, it looked like a baby, right?” I dont want another Lhasa Apso!
pregnancy dreams are the worst- so are you?
September 20, 2010 at 9:39 pm
This was an incredible post as anybody who has ever dreamed can relate to it. I have no advice–life is hard, we live :)