The books warned me that this would start, and it has. I have started having weird, vivid, totally unusual dreams that stick with me long after I wake up. 

One of the most recent, and most disturbing, involved me and the baby in the hospital shortly after birth. Our baby had been taken to the nursery and I was left to rest and recover in my room. After I woke from my nap, I decided to go for a little walk to the nursery to check up on little R.

This is where the dream started to take a turn from a happy ooooh-our-baby-was-just-born dream, to a scary nightmarish type dream.

As I got closer and closer to the nursery I heard this strange grinding sound that got louder and louder as I approached. When I got to the window of the nursery, all the baby cots were empty. There wasn’t a baby or employee in sight and the grinding was still louder.

I got a little nervous about the missing babies and decided to check it out. I let myself into the nursery and walked around to the nurses room where there were rocking chairs and such. There, in the nurses room, was a giant blender (the source of the loud grinding noise) filled with this pale, chunky goo. Next to the blender was a maniacal nurse with a rolling pin, rolling out what I only assumed was the blended baby mixture from the giant blender.

I woke up in a sweat, terrified about the whole ordeal and wanted desperately to wake up my husband. I ended up not waking him up, feeling silly about disturbing him. Instead I went to the kitchen, got myself a big glass of milk (my favorite mid-sleeping snack) and made my way back to bed.

Most of my other dreams, while vivid, have been nowhere near as horrifying. I dream of my big old belly, of not being able to get up from my futon later in the pregnancy (in Japan we sleep on the floor), and of accidentally stepping on the baby when it is sleeping on the floor next to me on its own infant futon (that’s the way they do things here). My hubby has been having strange dreams as well. He recently decided that we need to reorganize the furniture and such in our bedroom because he had a dream that we had an earthquake and the printer fell on my head while I was sleeping.

I think our dreams reflect our reality. We are excited about this upcoming change, but also quite nervous about it. It is a big step, and with no real experience, we are merely assuming that we will be up to the challenge.