lucyoncolorado

In which I have a nightmare that I'm pregnant with an almost full-term baby with fetal alcohol syndrome...

I’m at K’s Memorial Day BBQ, chatting with H. She tells me that you can continue to ovulate for months after you are pregnant, so even if you have periods and negative pregnancy tests, you might still be pregnant. The only way to find out for sure is to have a special type of blood test done.

Then I’m at the doctor and he confirms that I am, indeed, pregnant. This is wholly unexpected and I start to feel the anxiety and disbelief common to stress dreams. How can this be? I relate that I’ve done quite a bit of binge drinking over the past few months, and I ask him if this could have affected the child. He scans my head with a device that looks like Dr. McCoy’s medical scanner, and an image of my cerebellum pops up on a screen. It is floating in alcohol. The doctor shakes his head in disgust. There is an infant curled up and sleeping in a branch of the cerebellum’s arbor vitae.

“Fetal alcohol syndrome for sure,” the doctor says. I cry and say that I had no idea I was pregnant. The doctor just shrugs his shoulders.

I imagine my future: decades of care-giving to a disabled child. I’ll never be able to work again. I see a life of special education tuition, ARDS, temper tantrums, speech delays, a fragmented personality… I can’t do it. I tell the doctor I want an abortion.

“Too late. You’re seven months.” I’m thunderstruck. Seven months? Again, I feel the confusion of dream anxiety. How can this be? How have I screwed things up so horribly? My mind races for an explanation, and finding none, instead starts plotting an escape. I’m pro-choice and have no belief in souls or divine plans. I’ve studied enough anatomy and physiology not to shed tears over zygotes, embryos and early stage fetuses. But a nearly full-term pregnancy? Well, that’s different.

At least it should be different. Yet I don't feel any of the things I should be feeling. Could I really murder a viable baby? I search my feelings on the matter. It should fill me with horror, but instead the only thing I think of is my need to escape. This situation doesn’t make any sense. How can this be?

I sit on the cold metal examination table in my hospital gown and wonder about the strangeness of everything. How can this be? How can I not feel anything toward this baby? How can I have not known I was pregnant? When was I binge drinking? I don’t remember binge drinking.

I don’t remembering binge drinking.

I don’t remember binge drinking because I didn’t do it. Because this isn’t real. Because I’m dreaming! That’s the escape!

Then I wake up, sweaty and scared.