DREAM: Swaddled Baby

I’ve stopped to visit with some friends at an open air restaurant. (In real life, they are my former colleagues at the job I just left.) I’m so excited to show them my new baby – she is the love of my life! I sit down with them and begin to show her off, then decide I need to use the ladies room. I leave my swaddled baby with my friends and head off. As I’m leaving the ladies room I realize I don’t have my purse. Did I leave it at the table? In the stall? After thinking about it, I’m sure I had it with me when I entered the restroom. I head back to the stall I used and a young lady is coming out. I don’t see her carrying my purse. I pass a couple others on my way back and I’m checking them each out to see if they could have it stuffed under a coat or shirt. I get back to the stall and it’s not there. Now I’m thinking – maybe it was on the counter at the sink and I just overlooked it. I return to the sink. No purse. I’m worried about the bag and my phone being lost. I’ve spent such a long time here and now I’m worried about leaving my baby for so long. I return to the table to find my friends have all gone. Where is my baby?

Now I’m on a bus with my swaddled baby and I’m holding her up against me. She is so precious! Suddenly there is someone – a blonde woman – who is after me. She wants my baby! I must protect her! The woman has brought men with guns and they are shooting at the bus and are going to board it and take my baby! I pass my baby to one of my older children (my real daughter) thinking the woman won’t go after her. I will get off the bus to safety and then retrieve my baby. I leave the bus through the back door and am hiding, trying to navigate to a place where I can have my daughter hand the baby to me through a window. I never get there before the dream moves on. (Interesting side note: At some point in all this drama my daughter says something to me about how attentive I am with this baby. I say to her, I want to get it right this time!)

Now I’m in a house and there are other people there with me. Friends? Family? I have my swaddled baby with me again, but I want to keep her safe and out of the way, so I put her in a small wooden crate – like the kind you would buy at a craft store to decorate your home. She fits perfectly inside the crate. In order to keep her disguised, I set a book on top of her. As I’m interacting with the other people in the house I keep thinking about how she is in this box and I’m worried that the book is too heavy. Am I suffocating my baby?

INTERPRETATION:

Wow – this one is full of metaphor, but one central message. The baby is my book! This represents all the distractions I allow to keep me from spending time on my book! The comment to my daughter in the bus scene has to do with this being the second time I have taken a break from my career, and this time I want to spend my time in the right way. The blonde woman wanting to take my baby represents how I tend to sabotage myself and my dreams. I believe the baby always being swaddled represents my fear of putting my book out there. What will people think?