Again with the Dreams

Every time someone blogs about his or her dreams, there is always a disclaimer along the lines of "I know it's dumb to write about my dreams and nobody cares, but..." Personally, however, I find dreams fascinating and disturbing. Many mornings Penn and I talk about the strange dreams we had as he's getting ready for work and I'm still lounging in bed, and I like knowing what he dreams about. (His dreams are usually much more interesting than mine. Once he dreamt that a mud monster pulled me off my bicycle and he had to try to save me. Recently he had a dream that he was observing someone else's life, which I thought was strange because I've never been anyone other than myself in a dream. He also recently had a dream in which he wrote a successful Broadway musical entitled "The Tits on You, The Tits on Me" and ever since then he has been talking about what a hilarious show it was. The entire plot seemed to be songs about boobs, so...yes. Don't spend too much time trying to analyze that one.)

Anyway, all this to say, the other night I had one of the most bizarre dreams I've ever had. I've written here before about how I have pregnancy dreams all the time. Usually I'm in labor (and it HURTS, even in the dream) but nobody believes I'm actually in labor because it's too early or I'm "too small" and I'm terrified because I'm about to have the baby somewhere inappropriate like my kitchen or a performance hall or the parking lot of an amusement park. I never used to actually give birth in these dreams, but since meeting Penn two years ago I do actually give birth in these dreams about half the time. No idea what that's about (incidentally, I also used to almost never know who the father was supposed to be in these dreams. Now it is always Penn; sometimes he's in the dream, sometimes he's not).

In the dream I had the other night, I was very, very pregnant and I was at my parents' house with my parents, my sister, Penn, and maybe a few other people. I kept telling everyone how glad I was that I had made it to 40 weeks. I didn't have a normal pregnant belly, though, I had a kind of freaky alien-type belly that was very thin. Every time the baby pressed a hand or foot against the inside of my uterus you could see it through my stomach. Not just a little bulge, but all five fingers on a hand or the perfect outline of a foot. I kept trying to show this to Penn, saying, "You can see the hand, isn't that cool!?" but he kept saying, "No, that's kind of gross and freaky, honestly." (I agreed, when I thought about it after waking up. It WAS gross and freaky and decidedly not cool.) Anyway, I never actually felt labor pains in the dream, but I was standing in my parents' closet looking for something when I decided "Hey, it's my due date, I'm going to have the baby today. Might as well!" So I announced to my family that I was ready to have the baby. Penn pointed out that there was a blizzard outside and no way to safely drive to the hospital. He asked if I could just wait until later since I wasn't in labor at all yet, and I said, "No, I really want to see the baby right now. It has been 40 weeks, it's fine." And so we decided that I would just have the baby right then and there in my parents' kitchen, but since I wasn't actually in labor I declared that someone was just going to have to cut me open and get the baby out. And my dad said, "Okay, are you sure that's what you want?" and I said, "Yes!" and he grabbed a kitchen knife (a kitchen knife!) and I hopped up on the counter and stretched out on my back and my dad sliced me open and Penn pulled the baby out. There was no pain at all, and I was instantly back up on my feet and walking around. I was so happy to see the baby. It was a girl--a giant baby girl, much bigger than a normal newborn--and we passed her around and everyone held her and oohed and ahhed. And then I started freaking out because we'd pulled the baby out and I thought my doctor would be mad. It was as if I'd opened a Christmas present early and didn't want my parents to know that I'd cheated and peeked. So I started telling everyone "We made a mistake. We shouldn't have done this, the doctor is going to be mad. What is going to happen when we go to the hospital and tell them we already delivered the baby?!" Everyone tried to convince me that it was fine, that they would understand because of the blizzard, but I kept saying, "No, we need to put her back. We have to put her back." Dad and Penn and my sister started talking about it, and my dad said "Well, we can't put the baby back into *A*. She has already lost so much blood today, if we open her up again it might kill her." So then I said, "Well, it doesn't matter who carries her, we just have to put her back into someone so the hospital won't know we brought her out already." (Dream logic, gotta love it.) So Penn agreed that we could put the baby back inside him. And that's what we did. Penn was sitting on the couch and was just about to cut into his abdomen when I woke up.

It was so bizarre. I sort of wish that's how it actually was, though: "I'm tired of being pregnant, YOU take it for awhile!" The lack of pain would be a nice plus, too. I think the dream is probably because I've had babies on the brain lately, but the whole baby thing is another post entirely (and no, I'm definitely not pregnant in real life!).