Birth

Mary Shelley and the horror of maternity

Before it happens, women start dreaming.

Dreams about water are common, at first. Floods, rising tides, overflowing bathtubs. So are dreams about long journeys; women find themselves being rushed off to the airport in the middle of the night, not sure if they’ve packed enough for the trip, sometimes not even sure where they’re supposed to go or why.

These dreams are symptoms. Nearly everyone has them. They can’t be explained as a simple reaction to circumstances; they often start before the women themselves know what’s happening. Some women remember getting the same coded message for weeks — I’m going somewhere new; I’m not ready — before they actually take the pregnancy test and realize that their unknown destination is a baby.

As the pregnancy progresses, the dreams get more involved and vivid. They also get worse. Pregnant women dream more than the rest of us, and most of the dreams are bad; by the third trimester, they report having nightmares two and a half times more often than the average person. Often, these are dreams about abandoning the baby, or not knowing how to care for it; women dream about accidentally leaving their child in a dishwasher, or about putting it down somewhere and not being able to find it when they come back. One nightmare, which is…