Waiting Room
Journal Entry from July 6th, 2018
I've always been someone who has very vivid dreams ever since I was a kid. I can't say they have ever meant much or seemed to mean anything. I always wake up feeling like something was relevant to what was going on in my life in a roundabout way but not in a big enough way to really think much of it. Last night though was a little different. I dreamt I was in an office of some sort with a man speaking to me. I didn't know him but he seemed familiar like we were friends but this conversation was more professional. He was asking me about being a parent, what I was hoping it would be like, what I expected. Then he asked me how I felt about myself, my general confidence as a women as if it was about to drastically change and he wanted to make sure I had the support I needed to transition well. At this point, I look around the room and there is clearly a waiting room full of pregnant women. Waiting their turn of course for this same appointment, some sort of counseling for baby arrival I gather. Not a doctor's office but more a place where the mental and emotional aspects of childbirth are being addressed.
I should note that in all my years of vivid dreams I've maybe only had one or two where I was pregnant and they were always when I, of course, was worried that I might be. This dream was not that. It was this weird glimpse into my thoughts as I enter into this foster process. I have now come to admit to myself that this will most likely turn into adoption and I am excited for that possibility. Emotionally overwhelmed from every angle, but excited.
So how does this all connect? In the dream when he asked me how I felt about myself and my body because it was going to change I replied saying simply that it wouldn't as I won't be pregnant. And that's all I remember. I'm sure there was more but my dreams always seem to end very abruptly. I woke up with this overwhelming sense of sadness for what I would miss. I am still coming to terms with the idea that I may never get to experience being pregnant or giving birth, both things I had seriously hoped I would get to experience as a women and a mother but this was different than that. It also played into the emotions I am dealing with as I swallow everyone's thoughts on the matter as I share my news with more people. They ask those questions too, the ones that are weighing on me…don't you want to have your OWN baby? Don't you want to be pregnant? What about breastfeeding? I think about those things constantly. This dream made me think of other things though, I won't have to deal with any postpartum issues. I won't have to worry about losing my body. I won't have to get my pre-baby body back after I deliver. All positives I guess. But no one will ask me when I'm due, or how I'm feeling. No one will ask if they can touch my belly or if I'm having a boy or a girl. I won't get to be giddy over hiding a baby's name or wonder if massive heartburn means the baby will have a full head of hair. I won't deal with morning sickness or swollen ankles or ever feel a baby kick. I won't have to buy maternity clothes or worry about my water breaking at the worst possible moment. I won't get to experience any of those things. Now, I know that those things do not make you a mom. I know that, I do. But that doesn't change that there is a part of me that is mourning that part of motherhood now that I realize that I might not ever have it.
It's weird the things you think about in this process. I imagine as an expectant mother your brain is constantly going with all kinds of things, and so is mine but very different items on the agenda. It's hard to wrap your head around. I want to talk to people about it, my people, the people closest to me, but I'm not there yet, they aren't there yet. They are still at the "awh that's awesome, that's really cool that you want to do that" phase and I'm still at the "this is my option and I'm ok with it" phase which sounds so pathetically forced with optimism.