She

This may be a long post, but I ask you to bear with me as I would absolutely love to hear your advice/wisdom/opinion on this topic via comment or email.

I’ve spent all morning trying to figure out how to put into words a night so absolutely horrific and so decadently delicious all at the same time that I’m left in full acknowledgement that I will be unable to verbalize the exact feelings. But I will try.

I dreamt of my daughter last night. My unborn daughter. In the past 15 months of trying to conceive, I have now dreamt of her 3 times. Each time, she looks the same and each dream is so deliciously realistic that I can see her exact face, smell her sweetness and feel her warmth. I hold her and I feed her and I fret over her. Last night, for the first time, she smiled at me – a full wholehearted baby giggle smile.

I know her name, even though her name is not one of the ones that Ziggy and I have chosen for a girl. Given the names of people in our family that we particularly dislike, it’s almost funny what her name is. And I cringe to think that this person may think that we named our child after her, but no matter what names Ziggy presents to me, I KNOW that this would be her perfect name and I play with it on my tongue often.

But I will hold that name secret in my mind just like I have to hold her sweet face, because she is not real and I may never share her with anyone, so why share her name?

All three times that I have dreamt of her, I have awoken feeling so perfectly motherly that I have risen and walked straight to the room that should be her nursery to check on her – only, she isn’t there and that is when I realize that the dream in which I have relished for god knows how many hours or minutes is truly a nightmare. This morning, I entered the “nursery” only to find my husband snoring away in our spare bed. At some point in the night, I must have kicked him out of our bed for snoring and this is where he winds up occasionally. And when I entered the room expecting to see her crib and only saw bare pink walls, I felt a sense of despair and desperation –where IS she?

Why pink walls? Our home’s previous owners had 3 daughters and there is quite a bit of pink all over our house that we haven’t painted over or removed.

I don’t pretend to know the meaning of dreams. I don’t know if they are prophetic or if they merely represent a picture view of your fears/hopes/desires. I don’t know if they foretell future events or if they are nothing more than a picture image of the last thing that you fell asleep thinking about. I do not know if they are gifts from God or tools of the Devil. What I do know is that this particular dream, just this one, has me baffled as to whether I should accept it as a lovely gift wrapped in finery or if I should shun it as a cruel reminder of what I am lacking and what I cannot create.

Now, I’ve heard all of the stories of women who awake from dreams of positive pregnancy tests and babies only to run into the bathroom and oh so finally get their beloved positive. Don’t you think I tried that? Don’t you think that I stood in front of the mirror, gently and oh so lovingly rubbing my belly that I just knew held my newly formed baby girl while I waited the 3 minutes for the test to process and yet, no matter how I turn the test and no matter what light I hold it under, there is still no second line and my baby girl has yet again decided to taunt me in dreams rather than show the rest of the world how beautiful she is.

And why a girl? That is the part that confuses me. If dreams merely represent your desires or hopes or thoughts, then why the pink little baby girl? Everyone on earth knows that I can’t stand the thought of having a girl and that all I’ve ever wanted is a house full of rough and tumble boys. Outside of my dreams, the thoughts of a daughter actually make me panic – so why the girl?

And so, I am CD29 and I am not pregnant. I am sorry for being weak and testing during my “off” cycles, but you tell me what you would have done. Would you have tested?