From babycenter.org at 37 weeks:
"While you're sleeping, you're likely to have some intense dreams. Anxiety both about labor and about becoming a parent can fuel a lot of strange flights of unconscious fancy."
That is so spot on for me. In the last week, I have dreamed the following scenarios:
- The baby was born with a five o' clock shadow and his scruffy beard hurt my face when I tried to kiss him. Russ was proud; I was mortified.
- The epidural needle was as thick as a hot dog.
- Russ was playing a three-on-three basketball game while I was laboring and turned his phone off, so I couldn't get a hold of him to come to the hospital and the baby was born without him.
- We didn't have our own apartment; instead we brought the baby to Nordstrom. I sat on one of those velvety couches and the swanky shoe salesmen looked at me with disgust as I ate a sandwich, wiped up spit up, and asked where I could shower.
- When I tried to breastfeed the baby, milk shot out of me like water out of a garden hose. And it kept going. My mom showed up to help and said it was completely normal and that I would "leak" like that for another hour or so.
Despite the fact that these dreams begin my day with distress, everything else is going fine. I have weekly appointments now with my doctor, who is a gem. He always makes me feel relaxed and excited about what's happening in a few short weeks.
I now have this thought in my head every time we go anywhere or do anything: "I wonder how many more three-hour naps I will take'," "I wonder how many more drives in the car where it's just you and me," "I wonder how many more times we will go to all three hours of church without interruption," or "I wonder how many more packages of frozen corn dogs we'll get through before the baby comes." It's a weird feeling - I know that my life is about to change dramatically, and yet I can't really imagine what it will be like. To calm my fears of the unknown (since my dreams aren't helping anything), I am spending all my free time reading up and getting mentally prepared as well as taking inventory of all our baby goods and making sure we have the important things.
Although I grow increasingly more uncomfortable and whiny each day, I feel that my pregnancy has been relatively easy. I don't have anything else to compare it to, but I know I have managed to escape a lot of miserable things that happen to other pregnant women, so I count myself lucky.
At this very moment, the baby is hiccuping like mad inside me. Three more weeks until I get to meet him!
