A Dream

I step off the elevator. "You are late." My mother-in-law looks at me and walks in the other direction. "Come. Everyone is here for you."

Why is everyone here for me?

And it is a party. A baby shower party, and I look down and I'm not pregnant. And I look at my table of people, Sam, Beatrice, and then there is a little girl with black hair and dark eyes...Sam calls her Sofie, and she reaches up to me and says Mama. And..."A boy? You are getting a boy? What are you naming him?"

I turn around again and again looking at everyone. What are we naming him? Are we adopting a boy?

I begin writing names I love. Harry Thomas. I circle it. The names of our fathers.

"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOW. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow."

My eyes pop open.

OW, ow, ow. ow ow ow ow ooooooooooooow.

Beatrice. Is she hurt? She is caught between the bed and the wall. No, maybe her leg is pinned in the bedrails. Or, she fell out of bed and is wandering around her room in pain. What is happening? And before I process completely, Sam has jumped out of bed and run into Beatrice's room.

"Ow. ow. ow. ow. ow. Oooooow." It is coming from the window. Is there a child wandering lost? No, wait, of course, this happens every year.
"Bea is fine," he says. I glance at the clock. 5:15a.
"A cat in heat," I say. "It must be a cat, because only two creatures make such a heartbreakingly creepy sound. Children and cats."
"But why do they have to say OW?"
"I know. I dreamed we adopted a baby."
"Really? Just now?"
"Yes."
"Cool."
"I wish I could dream about Lucy."
"Yeah, me too. I haven't had one since she died."
"Me either."

:::

That night, the dream and the cat, happened in June. I wrote down that morning. I couldn't shake that feeling of having another baby. So powerful that night of screaming and baby dreams that I reread this post often. Saved in my draft posts, I thought about posting it many times, but then stopped. I just didn't want my dreams and unconscious life to say we should try again. It isn't fated.

After Beatrice was born, and she lay still unwashed on my body, I looked at Sam and said, "I'm not doing that ever again." Of course, your body and mind somehow transform the physical pain of childbirth into beauty. Call it evolutionary biology, or divine intervention. It didn't take too long for me to want another baby after Beatrice. Beatrice was nine months, we began talking about planning for our next baby. Sure, I couldn't will twins, but I could have our girls (Oh, I knew we would have girls) close together so they were twin-like. They would have been twenty-one months apart by the time we got pregnant. After Lucy died, it wasn't the physical pain I couldn't take again, it was the emotional pain of her death. "I will never have another baby, Sam."

Truth is, we both want another baby in our house. Sam and I. So, we are going to begin trying again. I have wrestled with whether or not I should announce this, or not. It seems strange to not say something, and strange to say something. I asked Sam if he thought I should announce it and he said, "I don't know. I just don't want anyone to say 'Yay, you are better now.'" Shit, he hit the nail on the head.

I know most of you understand this precarious edge we walk. Wanting a baby in our home, but not wanting to replace our dead child. Happy at the thought of a new member of our tribe, but sad at the loss of another. Optimistic, but terrified. Knowing that getting pregnant does not mean the same thing as 'happily ever after.'

I don't want to be too attached to an outcome that is not guaranteed. I don't know what the state of my fertility is like; the uterus could have issued Defcon Level Four in December for all I know. I don't know what happens now. I am summoning my inner zen master. I'm trying to breath deeply and accept whatever path reveals itself.