I’m starting to have very vivid dreams. Not only about having this baby, but also about things I normally do in a day – and I’ll come across something I must have had a dream about that won’t be done and I could have sworn I did it already. I’m having those kinds of dreams.

The first morning after one of these of late I was in the shower thinking over the dream and wondering “What the heck? That was a weird dream … ” I had dreamt that I had already had the baby, but I was only awake for the labor, and the doctors or nurses put me TO SLEEP for the delivery – in my dream, I couldn’t remember holding my baby or naming it. Infact when I woke up from what I thought was the labor I had a flat abdomen and was sent home. I had to go back to the hospital to get my baby – a girl, whom they named Dakota. I don’t like that name. So here I am, a day after delivery, back at the hospital finally holding my baby, whose name is Dakota, and they’re telling me how to clean the umbilical cord – but when I meet their explanations with blank stares they all look at one another and then at me and ask – “You mean, you haven’t done this before ???!!!”

That’s when I woke up to reality. So I’m in the shower, thinking about this dream and it occurs to me that I haven’t looked down or “felt” pregnant yet this morning – so I FREAK OUT, almost fall in the shower, and bring my soapy,shampooy, pudgy little hands to my belly … but it feels “normal” to me, so I still can’t tell – so I arch my neck in a way that shouldn’t be humanly possible that early in the morning and then I see it – my belly button is flat, and I can’t see my feet.

Oh the relief. I’m still pregnant. And then it kicks me. Good morning, mommy, I’m still right here. And the love and the joy that spills out of me, I’m so in love with this person, who has no idea that I needed a kick right then, but who did it anyway – because it can, and holy cow, it can kick me. How amazing is that?

I’m spell bound by this miracle. This actual person connected to my very being through tissue and blood and I’m feeding it, rocking it to sleep, carrying it around all day, I’m living a ‘normal’ existence with the most amazing privilege of being chosen to be a mom. And my baby kicks me, alot, but I can’t explain it. It’s the best feeling of my day. I imagine these little arms and hands just stretching inside my belly – these little knees crunched up to it’s belly and I can’t wait to see them stretch outside of me. To count those fingers and see the toes.

To kiss the swirl of hair on the top of that perfect head. I’m still pregnant. Thank God I’m still pregnant. It was just a dream.