Pregnancy Dreams

In the last seven months of pregnancy I have had a few baby-related dreams that stood out as memorable, so I thought I would record them here and provide a little interpretation. Feel free to chime in with what you think these weird dreams were trying to tell me!

#1: The Botched C-Section

Early on, maybe somewhere around the start of the second trimester, I dreamed that I was having a C-section. The doctor (my fertility doc, whom I haven’t seen in months and won’t actually be delivering the babies) took the first one out and put him in the clear plastic bassinet thing near my head. He/she (we didn’t know the genders at this time so in the dream it was genderless) was way smaller than any baby that could actually survive outside the womb, maybe about 8 inches long, but was crying and flailing around in what seemed to me to be a very distressed way.

Back to the operating table: the doctor was telling me that the second baby was in a difficult position and they couldn’t get him/her out through the same incision he had just made. He offered me the choice of having a much larger incision in my belly or “going through the legs.” By this he meant cutting into the top of my thigh and somehow getting the baby out that way. Obviously, this was ridiculous and impossible, so I yelled out in a panic that they should go ahead with the larger incision. Meanwhile I was also shouting for someone, anyone, to help the first baby, because no one was paying any attention to him and he obviously needed medical attention if he was so small.

End scene.

This was around the time we were first told that our babies shared a placenta (something that now has been debunked with about 90% accuracy) which meant they would be at a higher risk for several complications. This probably made me more worried about them having to be delivered early in an emergency situation. But I wonder if the dream also reflected some inner anxiety about the expertise of the doctors here. I actually don’t have any reason to worry about that, and I know they perform C-sections all the time, but perhaps my subconscious was just uneasy about the idea of a C-section in general.

 

#2: The Floating Eyeballs

I was 24 weeks pregnant when I dreamed that my belly button was an actual open hole into my uterus, and somehow, despite the physics of this being completely impossible, I was able to see through this hole like a little window. I was gazing into the hole and marveling over this when I saw a single eyeball float by. The eye was piercing blue. Shortly after that, I saw another eyeball, but this time the iris had no pigment. Neither eye seemed to be attached to a baby in any way, and for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to squeeze them out of my belly button hole. So I did, and put them in a ziplock bag, wondering to myself: “What do I do now?”

End scene.

This one really amused me. My belly button had been protruding more for a while and I had been wondering when it would become a true outie, so that may have formed the basis for the dream. I had also recently read somewhere about the babies having hair and eyelashes, but that they were all white at that point, so that’s probably where I got the idea of the creepy white eye. But what does it mean? My best interpretation is that one of the babies will have very blue eyes, and the other one will have…something different–hopefully not white eyes!

 

#3: Forgetting the Names

Just the other night I dreamed that my boys were born, we named them, and then endured a very difficult night of trying to soothe and feed them when they wouldn’t feed properly. In the morning, I was in the hospital bed trying to feed one of them, and I said, “Wait, which one is this?” My husband wasn’t sure. Then I said, “What did we name them, anyway? I don’t remember!” Unfortunately, in the fog of new parenthood, he couldn’t remember either, which led to me yelling at him to go find the birth certificate so we could figure out what our sons’ names were!

End scene.

I know exactly where this one is coming from. Throughout the pregnancy we have had a really hard time discussing names, because most of the ones I like, my husband is lukewarm about at best, and he hasn’t really been able to come up with any of his own. Thus, the huge question of what we will name our children has remained tabled for months now, and with only 8-9 weeks to go before their birth, I’m starting to get a little worked up about our lack of a plan. Although I’m sure that no parent is going to forget their newborn child’s name overnight, the dream reflects my apprehension that we may not be ready to make this important decision when the time comes.

 

Pretty weird stuff, eh? I find dreams like these very entertaining, so I wanted to record them for posterity. Can you think of any other interpretations that I haven’t thought of?