BABY DREAMS


I woke up this morning with TF and said, "Oh my god! I dreamt we had a baby!"

He perked up, "what did it look like?" (It looked like a newborn: old-man-faced, red, squishy.)

I realized then that the central point of the dream was not what she (and somehow I knew the baby was female) looked like, but that I was totally unprepared for the caretaking of a helpless infant. In fact, the dream focused around my panic that I kept getting separated from her and had to get back to her and that I hadn't remotely planned on how to integrate her into my life. And of course that I had all this other stuff to do, and I kept forgetting to nurse her, and then freaking out about it. Oddly, she didn't seem to mind. There was something sad about that.

In the dream, all I could think was that I hadn't even gotten any of that necessary baby crap that people give you at showers and stuff, all the clothes and blankets and necessary hoo-haw, because I hadn't even known I was having a kid until she was upon me.

I was desperate for two essential things. I needed a breast pump so that I could pump in my office. And one of those baby-holsters so that I could carry her around with me all the time when I wasn't teaching.

TF laughed about the "baby holster." The baby as gun.


Freud of course would say that this dream is entirely about me--that I am the baby as well as the adult in this dream. The baby who can just roll with whatever is thrown at her. The unprepared adult, afraid of failure. The adult who resents that her own self-soothing had to happen without a net.

But I also think that the dream is indicative of one of my real fears. I am terrified of having to do everything, all at once, and thereby doing a bad job when it comes to caring for an infant who will most deserve my attention. I fear that I will have to haul ass at work, haul ass with my parents, and then also haul ass with a baby. And the baby should be number one, in that scenario, but I don't know if I'll be able to cordon off that kind of space in my life. I'm going to need a pump and a holster to keep on truckin', and I won't be able to give a baby my undivided attention all day, every day.

I am going to need help. And I don't think I'm going to get it, from my immediate family at least. And I am certainly not going to get it from my profession. I am impressed by TF's insistence that he is down with whatever needs doing, should we have a family together.*


*Word on the street is that my family thinks I am "so desperate to get married" that I'll take about anybody. Ha! The dating pool ain't exactly rife with men looking for an overeducated and underpaid professor of medieval literature who works 70 hours a week, frequently in solitude, and who'll expect a 50/50 split for child-rearing.