Behind Closed Eyes--The Hospital

I am notorious for having the most lucid dreams and nightmares. Always have. I dream in full blown color, always. I can also usually remember several dreams that I've had each night. Occasionally, when I've been under a lot of stress or very, very little sleep, I'll have night terrors and wake up having a panic attack or crying my head off. Those latter dreams are never fun. Obviously.

Lately, I've noticed that I've been having a lot of dreams about being pregnant or giving birth. Why? Maybe I'm having some flashbacks of being in the hospital a few months ago?

For those of you who don't already know-I didn't have to most easy pregnancy with my daughter. I was hospitalized twice for preterm labor. First at 30 weeks and then again at 33-34 weeks. 

In this latest dream, or should I say nightmare that I only woke up from a few minutes ago, heart beating like I had been running, a little bit of panic setting in, and a slight feeling of nausea.

I had to get up and move around to remind myself that, thank god, it was only a dream.

Let me tell you what I remember. 

I was on a trip with a ton of random people from high school. There were a lot of familiar faces. Everyone was running around, having a great time, hanging out, drinking, swimming, acting like, well, teenagers in high school.

I was joining in on the fun and took a sip of beer and then started feeling very odd. I mentioned something about being pregnant? and then I was in a hospital room. There was a baby inside of me.

Why do I say that?

Because I FELT it moving. It wasn't actually mine though. I know, that sounds very weird. Well, it was even weirder for me because I just knew that it wasn't. It was like I was a surrogate mom or something. I even remember saying that I had just had my own baby and that I was having a baby for someone else...the details are a bit vague now that I'm awake. 

I remember being told to lay on the hospital bed and feeling spasms in my back, there was some wriggling in my tummy, hearing cracking of my spine...a nurse mumbling to me that  I was going to be okay. She had an eerily familiar, all too friendly voice. She shouted out something to a doctor about my spine rupturing or something like that? I was trying to say, "No, it doesn't hurt. It just feels weird", but she ignored the words coming out of my mouth. I was twisting up, my back arching, my spine cracking. (think asian horror movie, when the dead person is becoming contorted and crooked and you can hear their bones breaking), She held my ankle down and slid a really long needle in. I felt it. It didn't hurt much. It just stung. Then she was saying something like, "We're going to let you stay here for free", or something similar, as she injected some medicine into my forearm. Her voice was sweet, but in a creepy way. It was too sweet, ominously sweet. It made me uncomfortable. I could feel someone else sitting in the room, but I can't put a face to the person. I could just sense them behind me, sitting there as the nurse medicated me. I could actually feel this needle. It burned, I was moaning in pain, I could feel the medicine slowly flowing through my veins. I felt myself drifting away. I had been sedated and it was getting so dark, the movement of a baby. I was in labor...Then it was dark. 

I woke up in my bed. I felt so strange. 

The dream was just so real.  

What an awful dream. 

I'm sure I'm forgetting some details but this is all that I can recall. 

I'm finally calm now. I spoke to my husband who woke up a few minutes after I did. I told him about the dream and now I feel a bit more calm. The dream was very unsettling. For some reason, the thing that I remember the most is the overly "friendly" voice of the nurse. 

Now, I'm sitting here, watching tv, and hoping to go back to sleep soon. 

I pray that I won't have another dream like that one, or a continuation, which yes, oddly enough, those types of dreams do happen every now and then for me.

Well, if I do have another nightmare, I will post that one up as well.

Good night. Wish me sweet dreams, please!