Baby Babble – To sleep, perchance to dream…

Image – Anne Taintor

I’m 36 weeks pregnant and although I’ve had a few random baby dreams where perhaps I’ve caught a waft of baby smell or have been cuddling a faceless bundle, last night was the first time I’d experienced a baby anxiety dream and it’s really knocked me for six…

I couldn’t give birth. I quite simply couldn’t do it – no matter how much or how hard I pushed nothing was happening – baby wasn’t budging. The scene was perfectly set, it started in our lounge and I was on all fours breathing through contractions, fast forward to a birthing pool where I sat nonchalantly chatting to my hubby whilst he mopped my brow, when finally it was acknowledged by a nurse that although in labour nothing was really happening.

So I got out of the tub and a whole team of masked hospital staff were yelling at me to push – it was all happening in slow motion and no matter how hard I pushed it was as if I was coming up against a brick wall, I could hear the nurses saying that I wasn’t dilating and that they weren’t convinced I was even trying to push through my contractions…

There was no pain but my heart was in agony – it was breaking for our little boy as I was so desperate to get him out safely and to have him in my arms…that’s the last thing I remember before I awoke covered in sweat and desperate for the loo! It was a hard dream to shake and when I eventually got to sleep I had another dream that I’d lost both of our cats at Disney World!!! It was certainly an eventful night…

As if I need any more of a reason to lose sleep eh? So Mums and Mum’s-to-be – have any of you had baby anxiety dreams? Have you found they’ve affected you for days after? And why is it that just ahead of such a life-changing event you find you’re already loosing sleep?! No fair!

With Love,

Sarah xx