A dawn dream

I woke up in the early hours of this morning after the most vivid dream. I dreamt that I had a baby girl whose name was Amber. I gave birth to her at home after going to and fro between there and a hospital where I was asking for pain relief! I was with my grandmother for some reason. I got an epidural at the hospital and then walked home to this place I was living and sat in the front garden with a lot of people from my family. I went inside at one point and had the baby and I kept yelling to everyone ‘she’s alive! she’s alive!’ Everyone took out their cameras and starting snapping pictures of her from every angle - hundreds of pictures - in case she didn’t stay alive for long. Afterwards I went back to the garden and held her. It felt like nothing I’d ever experienced and I was refusing to put her down or pass her around.

It was just like a snippet of a dream, but it seemed like it went on forever, too. I woke up and was instantly filled with the most empty feeling when I realised that none of it was true. It seemed so real, I had named her and everything, and that name came out of the blue. It’s not one that was ever on my list of names. Who is Amber, I wonder? I can’t shake it from my mind today, or the feeling that I may never get to experience holding my own baby in my arms ever again.

Sleep has been pretty weird for me since Max died. I either can’t get enough of it and need to sleep the afternoon away as well, or I can’t sleep at all and lie awake for hours with my head whirring. I have sleeping tablets to help, but when I take them I end up really groggy the next day, which makes me really tired again so I sleep for hours in the afternoon and then can’t sleep again that night. It’s a vicious circle.

I have been having a lot of vivid dreams though. This was happening throughout my pregnancy as well, though a lot of the ones I had then were nightmares. I can’t remember the last time I had a dream that stuck with for hours afterwards like this one, though.