The Dreams: August 13th, 2011

I don't know if this is something that happens to all pregnant women but Ashley has had the craziest dreams recently. She wakes up in the middle of the night and she is either panting, crying, depressed, or frightened. Everyone has nightmares, and I get if you wake up crying or scared because someone was trying to kill you in your dream or you were falling off a building. It feels so real and then you wake up and realize that it wasn't real, it was a dream, and then go back to sleep. Not for a pregnant woman.

Ashley will wake up in the middle of the night freaking out and then decide to wake me up to tell me what she just dreamed about. One night when Ashley was around four months pregnant, she woke up in a panic and told me that she had the baby at four months and then the doctors took her and never brought her back (except her version of the story went on for about 10 minutes). I said, "It's impossible to have the baby now. Go back to sleep."

Another night she wakes up freaking out to tell me that she just dreamt that she had the baby but after the doctors took her to get cleaned up they brought back the wrong baby, they brought back a baby with dark curly hair. Ashley told them that this wasn't her baby. So the doctors apologized and brought back another baby, but this time the baby was a boy, so the doctors again apologized and brought back a baby that was already three months old. Ashley said that she told the doctors that this wasn't her child either but they insisted that it was and wouldn't listen to her. I said to Ashley, "That's impossible they have wristbands they give the babies now to prevent mix-ups. Go back to sleep."

Then most recently she wakes up panting and out of breathe. She wakes me up to tell me the dream and when I find out why she woke me up I just went back to sleep. Later she tells me that she dreamt that a serial killer woman trapped her in the house and was going to kill her and take her baby. Glad to know that I didn't lose any sleep over that one.

Tip #33: Sleep in the other room if you don't want to be bothered by dream recaps in the middle of the night.

And this is when I realized that I too would lose sleep on my journey to, destination... dad.