I dreamt last night that the baby I gave up as a young teenager in the 80s found me and introduced herself to me. The dream was set at our house when we lived in Stony Stratford (Milton Keynes), and when my children were young, except as now, my eldest was absent.
I felt sure that I had kept her for a year, but she told me that in fact I had given her up for adoption at three months. I couldn’t understand how I would have got that wrong, and I couldn’t fathom how I could have given her up at all.
It all seemed very real, and when I woke up I had to ask myself, did this happen? Did I have a baby as a teenager? I definitely didn’t, although oddly enough I seem to have a very strong idea of a memory of my then boyfriend being a bit rubbish when I was in hospital. But I don’t think that’s a memory either.
Her birth name was Sarah, but she didn’t go by her birth name, and I don’t recall what she called herself in the dream. I thought that she didn’t look like me, and she definitely didn’t look like the boy who would have been her father. He was a sweet guy but I think he probably would have been a bit rubbish, as he had had such an odd childhood himself, and in fact one of the reasons we split up was because I wanted children and he didn’t.
In the dream, I think that Sarah had her own child, so I would have been a grandma – something that doesn’t seem very likely any time soon (my two eldest children are Trans, and my two youngest have sworn off ever having children due to their Type 1 Diabetes. They might change their minds, but not soon).
This is the second time I have dreamt about a baby I gave up for adoption as a teenager. It never happened, so why is it a recurring dream? In the previous dream, the baby had been a boy, and he hadn’t come looking for me, I had gone looking for him, and it turned out he wanted nothing to do with me. Even though it was a dream, I had the same sense of being absolutely crushed as I would if it had been real.
And it leaves me with a profound sense of unease that is difficult to describe.
I did have a miscarriage the year before I had my eldest child, and we called her Julianne, although it was too early to be sure of the sex of the baby. I do occasionally think about what might have been, but it doesn’t provoke a strong sense of loss, since if Julianne had been born, my actual eldest would not have been conceived.
So what is this about? A sense of unresolved guilt? longing? regret?
Or is this just a manifestation of general anxiety and loss and grief?
City Borg on the Prairie 