Pregnant Dreams

I had heard from several people that dreams become much more vivid and detailed when you are pregnant. This has certainly been the case. While I have had several weird dreams, there are none more disconcerting than those regarding childbirth and raising the baby after it is born. Early in pregnancy, sometime during my first trimester, I had a dream that I had just brought the baby home from the hospital. We had been home for over 2 days and I had only remembered to feed the baby twice during that time. I remember feeling super guilty in my dream for neglecting my baby and when I woke up I started to get anxious about feeding the baby once its born. While I realize that the baby would not allow itself to go for 2 days without eating (my dream baby never cried to let me know it was hungry), it still made me wonder if I was equipped to care for a newborn. Apparently, from my readings about pregnancy, dreams like this are very common during pregnancy due to the fears of the unknown. About two weeks ago I had another disturbing dream. This time it was about childbirth. I have been reading quite a bit about childbirth lately in an attempt to mentally prepare myself (however, I realize that nothing will truly prepare me for the big event). I dreamt that my water broke. I was so happy and thought "I should go pack my bag for the hospital!" Apparently something in my dream world (perhaps the unpacked hospital bag) triggered me into an awareness that I was only 26 weeks pregnant and my water had already broken. (Side note: While I was working in High Risk Maternity during my dietetics internship we had women who were 26 weeks pregnant with PPROM - premature rupture of membranes - all the time, but they had "sprung a little leak." In my dream I had full out water breakage which is very different from PPROM and most definitely means that birth is soon.) When it hit me that I was going into labor 14 weeks early I decided that I should head upstairs (I was packing my hospital bag in the basement) and tell Keith. However, when I started to walk up the stairs, the umbilical cord fell out and was dangling between my legs so I kept on tripping on it while I was climbing the stairs (it fell all the way to the floor). Not only did it fall part way out, but it was already cut (however, the fact that it was cut and that the cord was an empty lumen didn't seem to phase me in the slightest - somehow the baby was still able to receive nutrients and oxygen in dream world). Once I got to the top of the stairs, Keith cut the umbilical cord so I could walk around without tripping and we put it in a ziplock baggie and put it on ice (like you would a severed finger) to transport it to the hospital. That's the last part of the dream that I remember. Bizarre. I guess my dreams are helping me to sort through the uncertainties of the near future. By experiencing the absolute extreme, worst case scenarios by dream I might be more equipped to handle the normal, but life-changing moments to come.