Pregnancy Nightmares
I've always had vivid dreams, often waking up to remember crazy adventures in dreamland or being weirded out by strange reoccurring dreams (like the one where I pull all of my teeth out by hand). I had nightmares, but they weren't frequent. Until I first became pregnant.

When I was pregnant with Logan, I had horrible nightmares. I would frequently wake up in the middle of the night sinking into the bed & pulling the covers over my head with a cold chill running down my spine & the pit of my stomach dropping. These nightmares were always gory with headless zombies & the like. The only comfort I found in this was that I would wake up knowing they were fictional experiences, as horrible as I felt upon waking. Although almost everything gave me nightmares, I made sure to limit my TV viewing to non-violent programs (except for CSI: Las Vegas. I still love that show).

Pregnancy in general has permanently altered my brain, because the nightmares never stopped even after Logan was born. They may have decreased in frequency, but not disappeared all together. To this day, I cannot watch a horror movie or I will have nightmares (how childish is that?). Bill has a few episodes of Ghost Hunters on the DVR that I was going to watch the other night & actually started until he stopped me & I thought the same thing - better not or I will regret it.

This pregnancy is a little different in the way that the content of my nightmares is now more realistic than fictional. When I once dreamed of ghosts & goblins, I now dream of car accidents, kidnapings, house fires, home invasions, a cheating/lying husband & other realistic tragedies. Mainly death. These I can't shake because there is an actual chance of them happening, unlike being woken up by the living dead. The most common nightmare I'm having now is that something is wrong with the baby.

Tomorrow afternoon is my 20 week ultrasound where we FINALLY get to see our new family member & figure out a name. For me, the pregnancy will officially feel "real" even though HG, a slowly growing belly & baby kicks have been going on for a while. Logan is coming with us so he can see the baby too. My nightmare is that we find something wrong on the ultrasound or even that the baby is no longer with us. The dream is so unbelievably real, it makes me numb. What makes this nightmare even more unbearable is that we experience this tragedy as a family in the moment, including Logan. I wake up feeling torn. What if there is something wrong? Do I want Logan there? But if everything is OK, I don't want him to miss out on this special family moment. I don't know - it just tears at my soul.

It's hard to escape this reality because it happens. People have miscarriages or stillborn births. I see the threads on parenting boards & blog posts linked around for support. I'm even stupid enough to open threads or follow links to read the stories. Bill has been getting "mad" at me for it (more like scolding me about it).

With Logan's 20 week ultrasound, I don't even think I was that worried about something being wrong regardless if I was a neurotic first time soon-to-be mom. I was just excited to know what we were having. I had seen him on ultrasound at 9 weeks, so the reality had already sunk in. This time I haven't thought about tomorrow too much because for one, I try to not think about it because of the nightmares & also, because I don't have time to constantly think about it being busy with Logan & life. It didn't really hit me that the ultrasound is tomorrow until last night.

I may be in for a long night of either no sleep due to excitement or unease because of nightmares. My stomach is in knots just even thinking about it.