Dream Time

It’s dream time again! In a recent dream I was at one of my doctor’s visits and the doctor told me very sadly, “I’m sorry Melarie, but your baby has a vampire disease called quid pro quo and won’t be able to live for more than a day after she is born.” It was a very distressing revelation of course, although kind of funny now that I am awake and know it was all a dream. A vampire disease? Probably from reading Twilight and thinking of Bella’s pregnancy. Called quid pro quo? I have no idea where that one came from. In my dream it sounded like a perfectly logical name for a disease, but in waking naturally I know it’s Latin for “something for something,” and refers to giving and receiving something of equal value. (Yeah right, I had to look it up). I think dreams are a person’s way of sorting things out in their mind, so I do believe that dreams have meaning, but I don’t know where I was going with the quid pro quo thing. Hmm, that could get deep.

So in my dream I am very devastated. All my plans for watching my baby grow up and having this perfect little family with her are dashed. I’ll just get one day with her. At first I don’t know what to think, but after a few minutes I can recognize that I am devastated not to get a lifetime with her. My dream self thinks that I should be feeling like carrying this baby for another month is useless because she is just going to be dying anyways. But my dream self also realizes that’s not how I feel, that I still want to nurture her until it is time for her to be born. At least I will be able to meet her and spend a little time with her before she dies. And I will love her in spite of her vampireness. The doctor asks me if I was still going to name her Julia, and I tell her yes, of course, her name is Julia. I ask if there were any symptoms earlier of the disease, and the Dr. said yes, and showed me a paper with all the possible symptoms in pregnancy for the disease. The symptoms I had were highlighted, like back pain. They just hadn't put it all together until today. After that I start thinking of how I am going to tell Robert and then I woke from my dream, very relieved that it was just a dream.

So the dream got me thinking a little. I never expressed it in the dream, but probably the reason I was not completely hopeless after hearing the horrible news was because of the eternal perspective I have as a Latter-Day Saint. No, I wasn’t going to get a lifetime with her, but I was going to get an eternity with her. She wasn’t going to stop being my baby after she died. So that made it okay for me to want to nurture her as long as I could. Also, I love her already, so no matter what she looked like she would still be the same baby that I have been feeling inside of me for months and I would still love her.

Anyway, I'm about 35 weeks now and the time seems so short until we really do get to meet our baby. I have two more weeks of work, so hopefully the last little while without work will let me get some stuff done around the house and finish getting ready for baby. I'm really excited to stop working because by the end of the day my back is killing me from sitting at a desk (and on a bus) for so long and I am exhausted from not getting enough (deep) sleep.