I had a dream… or rather a nightmare last night. I’ve posted about it on my Facebook status yesterday, and I promised myself if I still couldn’t brush this particular dream off from my memory by the time the clock stroke 12 am the next day, I’ll just talk about it here. Hey… I got to get it out of my system, some way, somehow, cuz it’s affecting me when I’m awake.

I’m not gonna apologize for expressing myself or for posting nonsensical things over here in my blog. Hey, it’s not as if most of you read word by word if an entry is wordy and picture-less anyway. Most of you merely skim thru and simply comment whatever crossed your mind without bothering to comprehend the articles anyway…. am I right?

Anyway, back to my ‘problem’. My late paternal grandmother was a superstitious person. She’s the kind of person who believes that certain dreams bring certain meaning. I tend to agree with her though I know that most dreams are a product of our subconscious mind.

While I believe that lucid dreams-dreams that we’re concious with the fact it’s just a dream when we had it or lucid dreams-dreams that we are fully in  control of what we’re doing while we had it are just a product of our tired subconscious mind, I tend to get rather superstitious and irritated throughout the day when the dreams that I had are not lucid dreams.

You see… last night I had this extremely vivid dream about me being pregnant and giving birth. I could easily pass this as a product of over-active brain activity if this is the first or second time I had it, but this is the third time I had such dream this year, and it’s affecting me when I’m awake. I simply can’t shake it off.

At times like this, I wish that somehow, my late grandmother is still alive to intrepret my dreams for me. During moments like this, I wished my grandma is here for me to tell me that it’s going to be okay. I wish that there’s an explanation for this.

I don’t know what it means, but this particular recurring dream always starts off with me rubbing a bulging tummy or me complaining how heavy I get with each passing seconds.

Then it will proceed into a scene that is more intense… which is the baby in the womb moving and kicking to the point I could see the outline of the tiny feet under the skin of my tummy. My hands would then cover my tummy and I would attempt to stop the baby from kicking me too hard. I would usually be breathless in these dreams and soon, contractions will follow and realizing that I’m in labour, I would start screaming for help. Usually, water won’t break. It would be blood instead… just like when I gave birth to my son.

Most of the time, in these dreams, I would just be automatically transported away into the labour room and I would proceed to have the baby with the assistance of doctors and nurses. And, when I finally gave birth in these dreams, it would either be twins… a baby boy and a baby girl, or just a baby girl. And when I finally managed to wake up, the contraction pains would be so real that I could feel it for a couple of moments when I just woke up. Yes… I could feel the pain, even after waking up… it’s as if I was giving birth for real, and it’s as if I had those nasty contractions for real. It usually last at least 15-30 minutes, and I would feel extremely lethargic throughout the day, and no matter what I did to recover my energy, it would not work.

This time around, though, the dream is abit different from the previous two that I had earlier of the year. This time around, the birthing process did not happen anywhere near a hospital or a labour room. It happens in the privacy of my own home, my own bed. This time around, it started off with me reading on the bed, with the paperback novel resting on my tummy as I read. The baby inside the womb kicks me then. I was rather amused, but started to get panicky when I realized that I’m already in my final trimester and the baby is not exactly in the correct position. I come to realize that the outline of the baby’s feet was at the bottom of my stomach instead near the diaphragm.

I was in extreme panic when I realized that the baby is actually a breech baby, and I started to call for help. My husband appeared with a midwife and her assistant then and the midwife insisted that I was wrong and the baby inside of my womb is not a breech baby. I was really aghast and I started to cry, because no one believes me and I was scared to death. I knew that I couldn’t possibly give birth to the baby in my womb the normal way. I knew I had to have a C-section to deliver the baby.

The midwife attempts to calm me down. She then touches my stomach to assure me that my baby is not a breech baby before going out of the room to discuss something with her assistant. I did not believe her, though. I knew I was right. How can the baby’s feet be at the bottom during the third trimester of the pregnancy be a normal baby? It simply does not make any sense to me, even in my dream.

While I was alone in the room again, my water broke. Yes, this time around, the water broke instead of having blood flowing in between my thighs. The texture of the water was slightly gooey and slimy, and it was all over my bed.

I did not know what it meant. I did not even realized that it was time for me to give birth, because this time around, there was no contraction… or rather, the contractions was barely noticeable and I thought it was just normal stomach-ache.

My husband, the midwife and her assistant made their re-appearance then. The midwife was completely horrified to discover that my water broke and she informed me that I was ready to give birth. I was really shocked, and in the midst of the panic, my husband was instructed to help me into a half sitting position. My husband was supporting me from the back throughout the entire episode while the midwife proceeds to help me deliver the baby. It seems to me during that time, the midwife was using the force of gravity to help me deliver the baby.The midwife’s assistant on the other hand was busy preparing the water to bathe the baby and clean me up after the birth.

At some point during delivery, I felt like screaming to the midwife. It was completely a natural birth. She did not perform any episiotomy, which is a normal practice in labour room these days.

I was right. The baby was a breech baby. The baby’s feet came out first before the rest of the body slides through, and after awhile I heard the baby cry. Nobody talks to me after that, and I was rather surprised that the labour pain this time around was not as intense as the ones before. I was really curious about the sex of the baby, and so, I turned my head to the side and saw the midwife’s assistant performing suction to suck fluid from the baby’s mouth and cutting off the umbilical cord of the baby before cleaning her up in a blue tub that’s filled with warm water.

She then showed me the baby, and it was a healthy baby girl of 3.2kg. She was crying on the top of her lungs, but her eyes was closed. Her nose was slightly yellowish with white dots, like most babies are when they’re just born. Her hair was thick and soft. They then diapered my daughter and wrapped her up in a clean towel before handing over the baby to me.

My husband asked me if I’d like to breastfeed our daughter, but I said I couldn’t breastfeed yet because my breasts felt empty and there was no milk. I told them to feed her with a bottle of S-26 formula milk instead, and they did. She stopped crying and I marveled at the fact that it was actually a fairly fast and easy labour despite the fact that she was a breech baby. The dream ended there, and I woke up feeling confused and looking for the baby daughter that I never had.

There was this dull pain in my stomach when I woke up… slightly similar to contractions, but the pain was manageable in comparison to the ones before.

I’m not quite sure if I can say this dream is a nightmare, because if I were to compare this dream and the previous two that I had this year, this was the easiest one that I had. It was not so painful and despite of the fear that I felt in the dream about the baby, she was born healthy and beautiful.

I told my husband about this dream when I woke up. I told him that I gave birth to a baby daughter in the dream, and it seems so real. He was flustered, but did not ask me anything about it further, which annoyed me, cuz I wanted to talk about it so that I can get it off my head.

Anyway, as I’m writing this, I come to realize that despite the fact that the dream that I had was not a lucid dream and I had no control over my limbs in the dream, I did made some reality checks at some point of the dream. Eg:e I knew that the baby was a breech baby as the feet are at the bottom of the stomach during near delivery even though everyone else in the dream antagonized me. In that dream, I knew that breech babies must be delivered via C-section too. I felt strange about episiotomy not being performed as well, and despite not being in control of the dream, some part of my brain are still functioning to wake me up and bring me back to reality. I also felt strange at the end of the dream, cuz it was too fast, too easy and the contractions was barely noticeable and I couldn’t really feel the pain while giving birth.

I suppose, that is a small comfort for me to know that no matter how deep into a dream or nightmare I am, my brain will still work logically and tries to make reality checks so that I can escape and wake up? Well, thank God for small mercies.

Cleffairy: If I had this dream many years back and wrote it as an essay with the title ‘The Dream That I Could Not Forget’ for my English test, I daresay my teacher would be aghast when she read it.