Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Pregnancy Journal - To Sleep, Perchance To Dream

By Kelly

I woke up this morning and saw Corey standing in the middle of the bedroom getting dressed for work. The kids were bouncing on some cushions on the floor, which they undoubtedly stripped off my white reading chairs in the corner. I struggled to get out of bed and join the party, but I was so groggy. My eyelids just wouldn’t stay open. I actually ended up walking around the room with my eyes closed, wondering why I couldn’t shake the woozy.

And then I woke up.

No one was in the room but me. I was laying in bed in sweat-soaked pajamas, struggling to distinguish reality from my dreams.

Such is the sleep of a pregnant woman.

I crave sleep during the first trimester, not only because I’m extra-tired, but because sleep offers the only sure respite I have from the nausea. So I sleep as often as I can. I go to bed at the earliest time possible. I nap every afternoon with my toddler. I’ve even been known to fall asleep during a showing of “Sesame Street” and/or the Vikings-Packers Monday Night Football game.

But for all the benefit of sleep, it’s the dreams that make headlines.

Last night, I dreamed I was living in a small town on the shore of Lake Superior. It was winter and everything was white and snowy and desolate. I was trying to talk Joel Flieschman, he of “Northern Exposure”: fame, into walking out on Lake Superior since it was frozen solid. “It’s what the locals do,” I assured him. He said he’d prefer to go somewhere not so windy (and it’s true, towns along the Great Lakes are boisterous in the winter) and talk “eye-to-eye.” (Like that even makes sense!) I was explaining to him that the only way to get away from the wind was to go up and over the hill when I woke up.

I had two other bizarre, Technicolor dreams last night, but I don’t want to bore you with the details – although I could, because I remember them vividly.

The point is, we pregnant women dream strange dreams.

I can’t figure out if it’s because our bodies are freaking out on us, possibly causing a tidal wave of hormones in our brains to rewire our normal REM patterns. Or maybe it’s just because we wake up all the time to pee, thus making dream recollection an easier feat.

Either way, I bet you still remember your most bizarre pregnancy dream. Hit me with it. And if it includes obscure (but beloved) TV characters from a hit show in the 90s, you get bonus points.

Kelly is currently expecting her fourth child, which means she has a lot of pregnancy dreams stored in her gray matter. She blogs at Love Well.

19 comments:

  1. Ha ha! I have had some doozies in the last few months, but not too many that I can remember at the moment... (pregnancy brain much?)
    I do remember one though... I was apparently on a train with my best friend's older brother (who I haven't seen or talked to in years). I was trying to convince him to propose to me. I had a note from my dad and without knowing what it said, I gave it to him. The note said something about please marry me. He was upset and then suddenly the train was inside a building and going uphill (steeply). Then we burst out of the building and were flying. There were a bunch of people on the train now and we came out of the side of a building and were above a large stadium arena with some sort of Olympic style opening ceremony going on. So there were all kinds of performers in the arena doing all kinds of things and we had a bird's eye view.
    Bizarre!

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  2. Pregnancy dreams are crazy! One night during my first pregnancy, I roused my husband because someone had broke into the house. Lots of someones actually. As he is downstairs checking out our break in of mass humanity, I sheepishly call him back to bed. When he arrives I tell him that I am pretty should I dreamed it. Why? he asked. Well, you see I now realize that I saw them all coming out of our bedroom wall. But it was so real!

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  3. I love my pregnancy dreams! They were always so strong and bright, not like now.

    I had one that involved Jonathan Brandis, after he was already passed away. I loved him as a tween, and he was lovely in my dream too.

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  4. When I was pregnant the first time around, I remember dreaming that I gave birth to a fawn. Everyone at the hospital was oohing and aahing over the adorable little baby fawn, and I was feeling guilty for being disappointed - all I wanted was my little baby girl, not some cute little baby deer!

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  5. I remember my pregnancy dreams as always being the same...me holding onto my family as we went up and down super steep roller coaster like hills...hmmm...that's not too hard to deciper is it? There is definitely something about those hormones wreaking havoc on our brains...

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  6. I had so many birth dreams with my first pregnancy! I remember one where I gave birth to a peanut, and everyone was saying how cute he was but I kept thinking, "But surely he's too small and I'm only 19 weeks" or whatever it was .

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  7. I definitely have crazy pregnancy dreams...more than a few of them too steamy and embarrassing to share! But I can share one that I had recently. At the time, I was a little stressed about an important project at work that involved preparing something for the president of the college I work for.

    In the dream, my job was to create a very special gift for an important VIP who was meeting with the president...and the gift was a crocheted afghan! (I do crochet.) And the thing was hideously ugly--bright, non-matching colors in weird clumps that had no pattern. I was frantically working to get it done in time. And then I was in an office with the president, and his wife was there with their new baby in a stroller (I guess a baby had to come into play somewhere). (Note: I don't actually interact with the president IRL. I'm WAY behind the scenes.) Then we all ate lunch in some kind of diner together, and the afghan wasn't ready on time, but the president didn't mind.

    It was such a funny dream...and it made a great story to tell the next day at the office!

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  8. I have had weird dreams this time around - the worst was that I dreamed I was in high school again, but I still had my son to take care of, so I shut him in my locker & gave him goldfish crackers, but he was talking & CPS could hear him, and they were walking around looking for which locker he was in & I was trying to get him out of there so they wouldn't take him - it was super scary - oh, I was SO glad when I woke up & realized I hadn't locked my son in a locker!!! :)

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  9. I used to dream CONSTANTLY that I had already had the baby, except I wasn't at all prepared and didn't have anything to take care of it. One I remember especially vividly was with my first daughter, dreaming that she came early and we took her to church, then left church and FORGOT HER, came back to get her, and only then realized that we didn't have a car seat. How we'd gotten her to church in the first place I have no idea!

    And I also always dreamed that I was in love with some of my old guy friends. Guy friends that in real life are so far from me falling for them they might as well be my brothers. And then I would wake up next to my husband and feel horribly guilty, like my unconscious mind was somehow cheating on him. And also slightly ill at the thought of ever being in love with any of those guys!

    Crazy, crazy times :)

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  10. Without fail, I always dream about a certain ex-boyfriend when I'm pregnant. When I was pregnant with Brody, I knew I was pregnant before I took the test because THE DREAMS began.

    They're never scandalous. In fact, I'm fairly certain we've never been "involved" in any of them. We're either just hanging out or he's like an "extra" in my dream. One time he was a waiter. Another time he was the guy who sold me my popcorn when I went to see that movie about the giant roll of toilet paper that killed the girl. (Oh, you didn't see that one? Vivid pregnancy dreams, I tell you.)

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  11. I've been pregnant 3 times. And although my dreams are normally bizarre, my pregnancies dream are bizarre on steroids. My youngest is 4 and the oldest is 13, and I can still vividly remember several of those bad boys.
    I liked to dream about having my baby early and having the Doctor deliver it, out of the middle of my stomach(and I never delivered via C-section), and then declare the baby too early and put it back in.
    I dreamed my baby was just born and talking to me.
    I dreamed of snakes, lots of snakes, and trying to keep them away from my baby.
    I dreamed of my baby drowning.
    The list goes on and on, and most of those dreams I had repeatedly. Clearly, I must have been concerned about my child's welfare.

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  12. That should read "pregnancy dreams". ;)

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  13. My favorite preggy dream was with my second child -- I dreamed that I was...in the desert maybe? On a giant wooden staircase, with Miss America contestant-like girls running up and down, up and down... I was at a landing part-way up, where there was a grocery store freezer case filled with pieces of pie, and that was all I cared about. :)

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  14. I always, always have crazy dreams, but they become espescially crazy during pregnancy. I had one during my first pregnancy that had to do with Russian spies kidnapping a group of people, then hiding them behind different masks of different types of animals. It has been over 10 years since I had that particular dream, so I don't remember many of the details.

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  15. And, Oh yeah, I during my 4 pregnancies I often dreamed about giving birth, or that I could see or feel the baby in my tummy, or that I could somehow take the baby out and put the baby back in.

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