What Dreams May Come; or, Alone and Afraid

I've been struggling these past few days without my Lawyer Guy, I have to admit. The first night he was gone, I was beset by terrible nightmares for hours. I've never had a dream like this--I would wake up to pee or to flop over in bed, catch my breath in amazement that I had only been dreaming and none of it was real, feel Smudgie thump me reassuringly, go back to sleep...and continue the nightmare right where I left off!!!

Smudgie was stillborn in my dream. I was at a hospital, wandering around and talking to a friend (who is in real life pregnant with a boy after IVF and due a few weeks after me). She had just given birth and was telling me about it when I suddenly realized that I had never finished giving birth to Smudgie. He or she was hanging out of my body as I walked around. I reached down and pulled Smudgie out and wrapped him or her in a blanket and looked at the waxen little face and tightly closed eyes. I then ran around the hospital desperately searching for the NICU, trying to find anyone who would help us. I finally found a nurse who told me he was dead--and a boy.

I was shaking when I woke up from that dream at 4am, disorientated and adrift, but Smudgie's kicks helped me fall back asleep.

And then for the rest of the night, I kept dreaming. I was wandering around dark city streets, waiting at a bus stop, crying because my baby was gone. I was at a party with LG's family at a huge hotel, trying to find a space to be alone and sob over the loss of my child while everyone around me celebrated. Toward morning, Smudgie's thumps must have infiltrated my dream-consciousness because even in sleep I could feel them. They became part of the dream, a refusal to accept that my baby was gone when I could feel him or her.

Finally at around 6:45 am, I hauled myself out of bed. I was exhausted from the terrible night's sleep but I was afraid to dream anymore. As soon as I got up, I started sobbing and shaking, completely overwhelmed by all those terrible visions. I texted LG to let him know I was scared because of a nightmare (I didn't want to call him crying and scare him) and we spoke while I cried and cried.

I eventually calmed myself down by watching CBS Sunday Morning (it was all about animals, very relaxing) and knitting. But I was unsettled and on-edge all day and worrying about Smudgie like I hadn't in a while. We're about to order furniture--I second guessed doing so. I over analyzed every thump or lack of thumps. I prayed extra hard in church.

That night, two friends came over for dinner on our roof deck and one of them slept over on our air mattress to keep me company. I slept much better and dreamed about nothing more frightening than wilted CSA produce (my pickup is today). And last night I slept alright, too. But it was terrible being so scared and so alone. And as hard as it is to be without LG here in my own home, I'm even more worried about my trip to California. What if I need to go into L&D while I'm out there? I've been lucky to have avoided that so far in this pregnancy, but so many women do, even women with perfectly healthy babies. Where will I go? How will I get there? I'm scared of being alone at a hospital, hearing bad news by myself. I'm scared of flying. I'm scared of hauling my suitcase (don't worry, I'm bringing our smallest one) up and down the California coast. I'm just really scared.

I'll end on a positive note, though. I'm feeling very well physically and I found out on Friday that I passed my three-hour glucose tolerance test. So no GD for me! It's a huge weight off my mind. And yes, I have indulged gleefully in a cookie or two since getting the news. The apartment is in shambles, but the renovation projects are slowly coming together and I'm hopeful that things should be much more orderly before I leave at the end of the month. And LG might be able to come up for the weekend on Friday to be with me at my ultrasound and to spend a wee bit of time together before we're parted again. I so, so, so hope he can.

Wasting My Time in the Bagel Line; or, More Messages From My Subconscious

On Monday, after much dithering, I mailed Clueless Preggo the book and card I had decided to send her to explain why I haven't been a very involved friend since she announced her pregnancy just about a month ago. It felt good. I love scratching another item off my to-do list, and I was glad to get these feelings off my chest and unburden myself to her. I didn't write the note expecting any particular response nor did I even want one. Or so I told myself.

Early this morning I had another one of my patented "Hello Sloper, Allow Me to Tell You How You Really Feel" dream messages from my subconscious. Such a pesky subconscious I have, never letting me hang out happily in denial.

I dreamed I was at Clueless's birthday party (which she didn't celebrate this year thanks to the pregnancy). We were on a rooftop balcony, her friends and family and I, but the only people I recognized in the crowd were her and her husband. She was pregnant, of course, and we were talking and the whole time I was wondering if she'd received my letter and what she thought of it and why she hadn't said anything about it and if I should bring it up. As she was called over to blow out her candles, I sheepishly asked if she'd gotten my note. "Oh, yeah," she said in an off-handed manner and walked away.

Later, she and her husband were giving me a ride home, and when we stopped at a red light, she got out to go stand in the median of the road for some reason (dream logic, remember). Alone in the car with me, her husband told me that Clueless didn't mean to hide her pregnancy for so long, but that she forgot that it would be a sensitive subject for me that needed to be dealt with delicately. Then I woke up.

It was about 5:30 am, and I lay there with that icky discomfort that follows an unpleasant dream, a mix of anxiety and frustration and restlessness. I realized that she either received my note yesterday or will have it delivered today. And I wondered what she will think and what she will do, if anything. And I didn't like wondering. I realized that I am incredibly angry with her, and for an incredibly unfair reason. I realized that she doesn't deserve to be pregnant when I'm not. That she hasn't earned this pregnancy the way I have (and, yes, this flies in the face of everything I've written previously about how we don't "earn" babies, but it was that kind of morning) through sadness and suffering and horrible, horrible waiting. I've been in this bagel line for sixteen G.D. months and she just cut right to the front. And now they're making her bagel and slathering it with cream cheese and piling on the tomatoes and I'm standing here eating my own fingernails I'm so hungry.

At that point, I realized I was crazy. Hungry and crazy. And then I did something very stupid.

You see, Clueless is an infrequent Facebook user and hasn't posted a single thing about her pregnancy, despite being 5-6 months along. On the one hand, I'm grateful to her for that, grateful to avoid the gut punch of logging in and tracking her progress week by week. And yet, knowing that she was going to learn the gender back in May and knowing the only way to find out the gender was to ask her and knowing that I did not want to ask her anything at all about being pregnant--well, all I can say is that being both incredibly nosy and incredibly passive-aggressive and avoidant makes life difficult for me.

But lying awake in the morning light, I suddenly remembered: baby registries! Surely she is registered by now, especially now that she knows the gender. And I can look it up and find out what she's having and never have to talk to her about it at all! Brilliant, right?

Wrong. But I did it anyway. I registry-stalked my friend at 6 am. I found out they are investing in primarily gray and red items--car seat, high chair, bibs and bath toys. But there, toward the bottom of the registry, were a little pink hat, a little pink onesie, and a lavender romper.

She's having a girl.

This doesn't make me feel good.

I am officially a crappy friend.

Dream On; or, Past as Prologue

Back in September, in the early weeks of the cycle that would lead to my one and only pregnancy, I had a series of dreams. Most of the details are unimportant. Suffice it to say that various surprising and nonsensical events occurred in a variety of surprising and nonsensical locations. More significantly, the person in these locations and participating in these events was me-- a happily, healthily, robustly pregnant me. A pregnant me surrounded by all the other pregnant ladies I knew at the time.

Those were the first dreams I'd had in the seven months we'd been trying to conceive in which I was pregnant. It felt like a sign. And sure enough, a few weeks later I realized I was in Lucky Cycle Seven. My role as seer of dream visions seemed secured.

Of course, Cycle Seven turned out to be rather unlucky. And my dreams gave me no indication of that. No anxieties about the pregnancy. No prophesied miscarriages. No warnings.

In the subsequent months I have had many dreams: some happy, some sad, some strange, some dull. I had a dream in which I gave birth to a rubbery, dead child a few weeks after the miscarriage. I've had dreams about the pregnant women in my life giving birth or getting divorced or talking about their pregnancies. But I have not had a dream in which I am pregnant again--happily pregnant, confidently pregnant--like those first prophetic ones. And through these past few months, through these last four post-miscarriage cycles, as much as I've hoped and feared and swung between brisk assurance and downright despair, deep inside I've suspected that I won't, that I can't get pregnant again until I have the right kind of dream.

The kind of dream I had two nights ago.

Lawyer Guy and I were in the waiting room of a doctor's office. A doctor I had never met before approached me and said the words I long to hear: "You're pregnant." She knew this, she explained, because I kept standing on one leg without wobbling, which showed that my center of gravity had shifted (clearly some of my recent yoga classes were intruding into this dream). She offered to call my usual gyn in to do an ultrasound and suggested I might be carrying twins. When Dr. B (my real life doctor) arrived, she performed the u/s and told me that even though it was too early to see anything, she could tell that this was a singleton pregnancy, non-ectopic, and going to be perfectly healthy and fine. Then I woke up.

On the one hand, it's interesting to see how my subconscious feelings about pregnancy have changed since the miscarriage. My earlier pregnancy dreams were all about me waddling around, rubbing my huge belly and feeling that pregnant lady glow (and getting that pregnant lady attention). This dream was about the reassurance that I won't have another miscarriage. It was a magical vision of the medical community as 100% accurate, of my body as capable and healthy. It was about learning I was pregnant and feeling joy and confidence that the first trimester will likely never have for me again.

And on the other hand...well, I'm a complete fool. This dream has given me so much hope. Being pregnant this cycle seems possible because of this dream. Seems almost...inevitable.

I can handle this. I have enough of that hard-won self-preserving pessimism left to keep myself from anticipating too much. No buying onesies and What to Expect for me. Another failed cycle after this build up will be hard, no doubt, but not any harder than what I've been through already. I can pick myself up and go on, finally rid of the stupid superstitions that have wormed their way into my normally sensible brain. Accepting that dreams and signs have no place in a world of IVF and CBEFMs, that there's nothing inevitable about making a baby.

But I would rather be right than sensible.

Only In My Dreams; or, Looking for Signs

I had a dream last night that I was pregnant. It was one of those dreams that slowly emerge into consciousness, when you're awake enough to feel and remember everything vividly but asleep enough to believe that what your mind imagines is real.

I was pretty far along, six or seven months, and had this huge belly and felt so happy and complete. When I woke up, I still felt that way. I felt somehow hopeful that it would and could come true.

Life continues as usual. I'm tired and exhausted from teaching and taking classes, and I try to convince myself that it's better for my work and my strength to not be pregnant this semester. I try to assuage my sadness with reminders of how happy I am with my husband and the many things and can do now that a child would interrupt.

The spotting is back. I'm tracking my ovulation. Maybe I'll have some answers in a few weeks.

I'd rather keep dreaming.