...and the crazy dreams continue!

As salaam alaikum,

I had a series of crazy, convoluted dreams last night. I feel like I dreamed the entire night.

In one dream, I was in the notorious mall of my dreams shopping in the women's clothing store for one of the characters in the novela I'm watching, Eunice. Eunice has very particular and expensive tastes, so I was pulling out things that I thought would appeal to her. I think I transitioned out of that dream before she tried anything on...

Also, lately in dreams, I've become people that I wasn't. In this other dream, I was living in Mexico and I was a Mexican-American woman who was pregnant. My husband was Mexican and he was the proprietor of a small neighborhood bar. Before my pregnancy, my husband and I would sometimes share a beer at the end of the day. But now I was pregnant, and he drank alone. One day, I decided that, like the women on the movies whose doctors said it was okay to drink wine every now and again during pregnancy, that it would be okay, if just this one time, to drink a beer while pregnant. So I took a flask of beer and sipped on it, hiding it behind my thigh when my husband came in so he wouldn't see it. It tasted so good (since I've never had beer in my life, I think it tasted like the ginger ale I drank before bed), I didn't think it would be a problem. So I sat by the window, looking out at the desolate countryside, sipping my beer, pregnant.

Then I switched back to being me. I was a fourth year medical student applying for residency. I felt my belly and I could feel the fundus of my uterus at the umbilicus. That made me about 20 weeks pregnant (yes, I was still pregnant). I suddenly became aware that I already had a little girl (maybe the little girl that I wanted to name Hasna from my dream that I had a baby for B) and that this one would be a boy. I was unmarried and not with the father, and I was still trying to complete my medical degree. I remember thinking how upset my mother would be if she found out and wondered how much longer I could keep it a secret. I looked in the mirror and sucked in my stomach, but it was no use. You could see the protrusion in my lower abdomen. I kept feeling the fundus and reflecting that it should have been a lot more uncomfortable. I resolved to practice my Leopold maneuvers on myself to know how to more gently touch a pregnant woman.

Even though this was my second pregnancy, I was still excited to feel the baby growing inside of me, to feel myself sustaining the pregnancy. I stopped pressing on my uterus for fear of causing myself to miscarry, which I acknowledged was a bit of a silly fear. And I reflected with satisfaction that I did not have hyperemesis gravidarum.

Then the last dream was a dream that was mixed Mad Men with medical school. One of my classmates was Cosgrove, and we were talking about how exclusive his apartment was. The apartment complex was connected to this agency we worked in, which was like in the middle of nowhere but the apartments were luxury and it was ultimate convenience getting to the office, though that meant you pretty much never left. We were going to sneak and check out his apartment without him knowing, but when we got ourselves into the lobby, there was a small buffet of fancy snack food waiting for us, as if we were in a conference. It was the realtor, I think, showing properties. So we stopped, and then Cosgrove and a cohort of my classmates came, bringing more food, making it a potluck. Soon, everyone was really my classmates from medical school, the ones who are graduating, mixed in with a few college friends. Then my mother and brother were at the end of the line, waiting for food. I hadn't seen my mother in a little bit, so I grabbed a pickle, which was more sweet than tart, and started talking to her about all of the food available.

With the parents of my family, the whole gathering became very sentimental. I don't think I was pregnant in this part of the dream.

I was in the process of making a plate when I woke up.

I had some other dreams, I believe, but those are the ones that stick out in my mind.