Dreamland

Yes, I know, it's been forever since I've written. After weeks (yes, weeks) of sitting around bored, waiting to have a baby already, it's been a bit of an adjustment to be so freaking busy all of a sudden. LL is doing great, eating and gaining weight and pooping like a champ (that's the baby trifecta!). S and I are a bit sleep-deprived, but not as much as I expected -- we're managing to take turns pretty well, so that we each get a shot at a modest amount of sleep in a semi-regular basis. It helps that my parents were here for the first two weeks, and S's parents are here now, helping with shopping and cooking and laundry.

I promise that details about the birth, and the (on-going) recovery, and the bris, and the first few weeks home, will be forthcoming soon. Today, though, I have to talk about dreams. During the last part of my pregnancy, I had some rather peculiar dreams, but they were sort of hazy and fragmented. Nothing particularly significant. Since LL was born, however, I've been having amazingly vivid dreams. Most of them are standard I'm-a-new-mom stuff -- dreams where I forget the baby somewhere, or I lose the baby, or the baby gets hurt. It all seems like pretty run-of-the-mill material. There has been one dream, however, which stands out:

I'm sitting around a large table with ~30 other people, including the Baby Whisperer. The Baby Whisperer is slowly passing a screaming newborn infant around the table, so that each person can take a turn at trying to calm the baby. Since it's a fairly large group of people, there's a lot of down time while waiting for your turn to calm the baby, so the rest of the group has been instructed to solve the crisis in Iraq while they wait. (I told you the dream was odd.) When the baby finally gets around to me, the Baby Whisperer skips over me and proceeds directly to the next person. When I protest that I want my turn with the baby, she tells me that it's more important that I keep my focus on Iraq.

So, interpretations? Does the dream mean that my subconscious mind:

a) has no faith in my ability to calm a baby?
b) has far too much faith in my ability to solve international crises?
c) is far too obsessed with the Baby Whisperer?
d) rejects the idea that one can both be a good mother and successfully negotiate international diplomacy (take that, Sarah Palin!)?
e) all of the above.

I'm thinking (e). Though I must admit to being surprised that apparently I consciously want to remain with the baby, while I subconsciously am urging myself to return to work. You know that I'm a betting woman -- my money would have had those reversed....