I have lived with this brain of mine for a long time -- 38 years, to be precise -- and I was pretty sure that my anxiety of late was just jangling neurotransmitters, and not anything more serious. (Can neurotransmitters jangle? a teeny tiny tintinnabulation?) I was already feeling better by yesterday evening, and so I was blaming it on the caffeine. (I'm pretty sensitive to caffeine. I am informed that my reaction to a cup of coffee when I've been off of it for a while is funny stuff.) But I woke up this morning to a dream that suggests it's not just the caffeine.
In my dream I was pregnant. Twice. Somehow I had conceived again, just a few weeks from the end of this current pregnancy, so that I was carrying one big eight-month baby and one tiny two-week embryo. (I learned about superfetation this summer, after I'd spent nine years as an NFP instructor telling people that progesterone suppresses additional ovulations. I'll have to add a "virtually always" to that spiel in the future. NB: there are no reported cases of women conceiving at 36 weeks, but my unconscious wasn't going to let details stand in its way.) In my dream, I knew that I would be delivering this baby shortly, but that I would have to stay pregnant until August with the new baby. Then I would have two babies, eight months apart. How was I going to manage that? Seventeen months of pregnancy and then a newborn arriving right when the older one was crawling well? In my dream I was striving valiantly to have a good attitude but I felt so overwhelmed. It wasn't one of those dreams where you're kind of aware it's a dream, and whatever is happening may be annoying but you know it's just temporary. This was reality: I was having twins. Weird not-really twins.
I can't tell you how relieved I was to wake up. It's absurd, I know, but it took me all day to laugh about it.
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