Dreams

It's often said that pregnant women have vivid, even clairvoyant dreams. Before I found out I was having a girl, one of my coworkers used to ask me almost daily to recount my dreams. Having moved to the United States from Korea only after getting married, many of this coworker's views are steeped in foreignness.

"Have you dreamed of many spoons?" she asked she one morning. When I told her I hadn't, she gave me other options. "A tree with many peaches? A hive with many bees?" If a woman dreams of many, she explained, then she's having a girl.

"Maybe you've dreamed of a tree with one big ripe peach," she suggested. "Then--boy."

I never did dream of abundance or of a single, beautiful object, but nonetheless, my baby seems to have a sex. And while I love legend and mystery, I'm more apt to believe that there isn't anything unique about the dreams of pregnant women--we simply wake up more often, interrupting deep sleep, keeping dreams spinning in our minds.

Since I found out I was pregnant, I've been pregnant in my dreams. I've never been more or less pregnant than I've been in life, a sign, I believe, that the pregnancy is constantly on my mind.

Often in these dreams, I'm in danger. Once my sister and I sat down at a restaurant only to have a masked attacker come in and hold everyone hostage. Once I realized I was in my old apartment, and I panicked, knowing that I no longer lived there, knowing that the new tenant would try to hurt me and the baby. And last night my dog and I were staying at the home of a family I'd never met. There were teenage boys who began to torment my dog, dragging her by her legs through the hall. She looked at me, helpless. I yelled at them to stop, and one the boys looked at me with a glint in his eyes, to tell me I was next.

That's when I woke up, felt my belly to make sure it was still there, and looked down at my dog, who was peacefully curled up on the floor, snoring quietly.

I think, at night, the fears that I try to keep at bay during the day--that something will go wrong in the pregnancy, sometimes awaken. But I'll focus on the day dreams.