I’ve always had weird dreams (elephants playing banjo are extremely common and I’ve never taken an illegal drug in my life) and this only got worse when I was pregnant.
The first weird dream happened the night before I went for my first scan. I dreamt that the sonographer put the wand on my stomach and the screen was blank. Nothing there at all. Not even evidence of a miscarriage. I felt so embarrassed and that was before the receptionist told me off in front of a waiting room full of expectant woman for wasting everyone’s time. Apparently this is quite a common pregnancy dream, so maybe I’m not so freaky after all and the irony of dreaming of no babies and actually finding two isn’t lost on me.
My next pregnancy dream was an absolute cracker. At about 23 weeks pregnant, I dreamt that I had a zip on my stomach, which allowed me to take the babies out, have a look at them and put them back. It gets weirder. They were wearing pristine yellow babygros. Every so often I would unzip, take one of the babies out, say ‘No, not quite ready yet’ and pop them back. How utterly bizarre is that?!
It didn’t stop there. Very late on in my pregnancy, at around 36 weeks I dreamt that I was in the middle of my caesarean, behind the screen the babies were pulled out and the midwife muttered ‘We need to shave the babies’. Apparently, they were covered in thick back hair from head to toe. This bothered me so much that when R and G were handed to dh and I to hold I had to check underneath their hats and towels to see how much hair they actually had. Thankfully they both had a good thatch on their heads and nowhere else. I blame ‘The hairy baby-maker’ episode from Father Ted for this one.
I’d read that pregnant women often experience more vivid dreams during pregnancy, particularly in the second trimester and it’s one of those things that you don’t pay much attention to because you can’t quite believe it would really happen. I’m living proof that it does and if anyone can beat the zip dream for freakiness, I’ll buy them a choccy bar of their choice.