If you were part of our journey through my pregnancy with Faith, you may have heard about my pregnancy dreams. As long as I can remember, I have had very vivid dreams. Fortunately past the age of nine or ten, the dreams that stayed in my head were never scary or unpleasant. Until I got pregnant...
I noticed quite early on that my dreams seemed to become increasingly vivid and increasingly strange. The high (or perhaps low is a better word) point came the night that I began having unpleasant somewhat scary dreams. In one night, I had a dream about zombies (yes, you read right!) chasing me and my family. Somehow this dream morphed into a very intense dream about loading horses onto trailers to rescue them from some unknown threat. I often see symbolism in my dreams, but even I can see that these dreams clearly had no meaning or significance beyond pregnancy hormones.
The night after we found out that Faith had no heartbeat I dreamed about her. Somehow, my subconscious recognized that we were having a girl even though we were not told her gender until after she was delivered. This dream was no less vivid than all the others. In it, I was carrying her around trying to explain to people that I was her mother. I don't think they could see her or if they did they did not recognize me as a parent. My mind was trying to work through the emotions of becoming a parent to a child no one would ever meet. Needless to say, I woke up and spent the rest of the night on the couch surfing the internet, reading, and doing my best to stay awake so that I would not have another dream. The next time I slept I had some help from a wonderful friend called morphine.
Once we arrived home and after one night of really unpleasant dreams, I had help sleeping in the form of Ambien and painkillers. I slept dreamlessly through the freshest part of my grief, and I was able to allow myself some much needed rest knowing that I did not need to fear having unpleasant dreams. I stopped taking the Ambien after about the first month, and for the most part, I have slept just fine. Some nights sleep is a little slow in coming, but I haven't had dreams that I can remember at all since the first night home from the hospital. I still have a few Ambien left. I'm saving them for right around my due date in a few weeks just in case.
I may have to rethink saving those Ambien, however, because last night was particularly unpleasant. First of all, you should know that we had some significant thunder and lightening overnight. I think that helped contribute to my dream. I had one of those dreams where even after you wake up and move around and try to resettle the second you drift back off the dream continues where it left off. And, I have to say this one was particularly nasty. I don't remember all the details, but let's just say it involved a large apartment building in which the upper floors were gradually collapsing and an elevator that would suddenly fall five or more floors before stopping between floors. I don't know if you've ever had a dream where it feels like you're watching it happen like a movie, but this was one like that. One part of me recognized that the logical choice would be to simply get out of the building, but the other part of me was part of the "movie" and, like all the other characters, hauled furniture and boxes from an apartment on one of the upper floors to one on a lower floor on the sketchy elevator.
If you have any thoughts about what this dream might mean or the significance of it, let me know, but I think I'm about ready to give credit for the creepiness of this dream to the storm and start praying that the next dream I have is more pleasant! So may you sleep dreamlessly or have happy dreams and may you never feel the need to wish for anyone (especially me!) that all their dreams come true (cause I never want to experience last night's again and I may have significant trouble the next time I'm faced with an elevator!!).
No comments:
Post a Comment