My Baby Girl, Alana

I had a really weird dream waking up on Saturday.




(I know, I'm always having some sort of weird dream).



But this was quite odd, as that particular early morning when I heard Hubbie getting ready in the bedroom as he was getting ready to leave for work, I then fell asleep and had this trippy dream, only to wake up again as his car was departing.

So knowing his morning get-to-work routine, I'd had this dream within 10-15 minutes of being awake, falling asleep and waking up again.

Weeeiirrddddd.

The dream itself was a bit jumpy. Here's what I remember though.

- Being in a dimly-lit hospital room. Heavily pregnant, lying on a bed, with a midwife besides me. She says "One more push, and that's it." I tense and give one big push, and it seems the baby just POPS! out.

- Standing in front of a mirror, my midriff visible, admiring my flat stomach. Thinking 'this isn't so bad. See I just gave birth and my stomach is super flat.'

- Looking at an ultrasound photo of my baby girl. Thinking 'she looks like me when I was a baby.'

- Arriving home with the new addition. Looking at her and thinking 'my baby girl, Alana.'

- Remembering suddenly after being home for 24 hours that 'oh shit! I need to check on her! Does she need milk, a nappy change, anything?' Realising that I was gonna have to do this mother thing a bit differently, and focus a bit more on the new baby that was suddenly a part of our lives.

- Listening to Hubbie who was on his way to work (he was dressed for it) who had just checked up on our baby girl, recount how he felt looking at her: "she's so amazing! I could just look at her all day." Watching his face, how it lit up when he spoke of her, how his eyes shone with wonder and awe, his whole demeanour a picture of fascination and utter devotion.



When I woke up only minutes later, hearing Hubbie's car start up in the garage, I couldn't stop repeating the scenes of the dream in my head. You know when you've woken from a dream, and even though you know it was just a dream, you can't stop thinking of it and believing in it? I just kept thinking 'oh wow, our baby girl, Alana. What a unique name.' I kept thinking of how much love I had just developed, for this unplanned and unreal baby, that hadn't been in my consciousness for more than 20 minutes. Thinking of the love on Hubbie's face, the coinciding love that I too had felt, and the feelings of the dream just continued to overwhelm me. I couldn't stop thinking about it, however miraculously I was able to fall asleep again.



The dream itself and the subsequent emotions it produced in me are very out of the ordinary, as EVERY OTHER dream I've EVER had about being pregnant, or having a baby leads to both dream-feelings and after-dream-real-life-feelings of 'no, I'm not ready,' or 'no, I don't wanna do this' or 'I want this thing out of me but I don't wanna get it out, AHHH!'

Suffice to say that Hubbie and I are not yet in the middle of plans to extend the family. I have never despised children, but seeing as we both have sisters with children of their own, we have been first-hand witnesses to the struggles of raising them, and both the effort and commitment required to grow them up.

That combined with my open proclaimation that I am in a selfish phase (Hubbie likes to say we are simply 'enjoying' this phase of our marriage!), I want to be extra, extra, extra sure that I have certain things out of my system before we take the next big step. I need to be ready. Blonde tells me from her talks with mothers that you will never ever really be ready. Which is also quite scary if you think about being unprepared for the next step and having something growing inside of you. But I truly believe that I will feel something change in me, and I will know it is time.

However after this dream, I don't feel there needs to be much twisting of my arm, too much coaxing from Hubbie before we make the decision. When you feel the emotion of love, so true and so real in a dream, the feeling produced lasts long after the dream has ended. Like the fear brought about from a nightmare, so too does the feeling of love transfer into real life and extend long past days into weeks.

I guess I'm lucky, I have time on my side. We can't really do anything, seeing as our plan is first to build our house and move in and get settled before making any other big changes.

But, I can't lie, the dream has got my head ticking....ticking.....

Hubbie thinks Alana is an interesting name. I had to run the dream past him, of course :)



On an aside, it's also weird that I dreamt this, seeing as just recently I read and commented on a blog which I follow called "The Crymes Syndicate."

Margaret's post "The giraffe-necked baby was all in your head" recounts her dream of her unborn child, and it's a great read. You must check it out:



http://www.crymesyndicate.com/2010/08/giraffe-necked-baby-was-all-in-your.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheCrymesSyndicate+%28The+Crymes+Syndicate%29



And on an aside number 2, guess what one of the story highlights of the day are on todays My Daily News link?



"What should you eat to fall pregnant with a girl?"



Not. Joking.