13. Literal Nightmare Childbirth
It was early into my now-wife’s and my relationship, I had a terrible dream about her in childbirth. The dream was very vivid and long. It was like I spent days in the hospital with her and everything was in a strange twilight. When it came time to deliver the baby things went very wrong and she and the baby ended up dying.
I woke up quite shaken, naturally, but brushed it off. I am a nurse and have had to deal with traumatic OB situations before, and I chalked it up to me dealing with that stress through a dream. Six years later and my wife is pregnant. I have forgotten the dream by now. I get a call late into the third trimester while I am on shift.
My wife is going to the emergency room for a bad blood pressure reading. I get off my shift and go to meet her there. As soon as I step into the room, I remember my dream. I’m also super shocked because It’s the same room as in the dream—but that’s not the spookiest part. It’s extra weird because the hospital we were at wasn’t even built when I had the dream.
So when “showtime” comes around, my wife gets ready to begin pushing and it’s exactly the same scenario as my dream. Things start going poorly, but the doctor thinks delivery is still possible. At this point, I finally freak out into full panic and demand a C-section for my wife. I can tell the doctor wants to argue but I think my outburst made her step back and reassess the situation and she made the call for an emergency C-section.
It took 10 minutes for me to get taken back and as I’m in the OR I see my baby come out lifeless. They do everything they can and manage to resuscitate her. In the meantime, my wife is doing poorly and they are scrambling to control her bleeding. I follow the baby out knowing there’s really nothing I can do. The baby gets life-flighted to another hospital.
Before we left I see my wife has stabilized and headed to the ICU. Both my wife and baby are critical but alive. Today they are both thriving and my baby is 16 months and just a tornado of energy. I don’t know that they would be alive if not for that dream and it causing me to freak out and demand a change in plan.