I had an interesting dream the other night. Now, in order to fully understand what’s going on, I will explain a few things to those of you that don’t know me and my story:
My husband and I are both nineteen. We married early because we’re both going into the Army and waiting until next summer to get married would make it difficult for us to be stationed together. He’s currently in boot camp and I leave in a few weeks. While he is planning on making the Army a career and staying in for twenty years, I’m unsure of how long I want to stay in. For now, my contract says three years. My thoughts for now are that if I don’t like being in the Army, I will get out after those three years, however if I decide I want to stay in, I will apply for OCS (Officer Candidate School) and continue my career as an officer rather than an enlisted soldier. By that time I will be twenty-two, going on twenty-three, which is still early enough in my life that if I don’t want to stay in, I have plenty of time to pick a new direction for my life. My husband and I do want to start a family, but not until after I’ve decided if I’m going to stay in the Army or not, so, at least three years, probably more like five. Ok, so onto the dream:
This takes place sometime in the year before my contract is over, so, about two – two and a half years from now. It’s about the time that I’m looking over the OCS application. I’m going to tell this in story format.
Characters’ names: Laura (me) and Logan (my husband).
I pulled the box out of the brown paper bag from the pharmacy. ‘Home pregnancy test,’ it said. I can’t believe I’m doing this. There’s no way I’m pregnant, I thought, shaking my head softly as I opened the box.
Fast-forward a few minutes.
My hands were trembling as I held the small object in front of me. I hadn’t heard the front door open, but there was Logan, standing in the doorway. “What’s wrong babe? You look like you just saw a ghost,” his face mirrored the concern in his voice, and as I glanced into the mirror across from me, I saw that I was indeed quite pale. I sighed as I took one last look at the object in my hands and then handed it to him. Warily, he took it from me and as he looked at it, confusion crossed his face. “Does this mean…are you…are we…” he stammered. “We’re going to have a baby,” I whispered. His eyes went wide as he fell against the doorframe and his jaw dropped slightly, showing the shock that we were both feeling. “I know it’s earlier than we had talked about, but it’s happening,” I said softly as the first tear slid down my cheek. “Why are you crying? I know it’s a shock, but it’s nothing to be upset about. We’re going to have a baby!” His shock was quickly changing to excitement and he placed the pregnancy test on the counter before wrapping his arms around me. “I know. I know. I’m not upset per se. I’m…shocked, yes. But worried. Scared. I mean, we had a plan. I was going to apply to OCS this year. I can’t do that now…what are we going to do?” I whispered the question, burying my face in his shoulder. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll make it work. We just have to rework our plan a little,” he assured me. I nodded into his shoulder, still trying to wrap my mind around the idea that there was a tiny person growing inside of me. “I’ll call the doctor tomorrow and set up an appointment,” I told him. “Would you like me to come with you?” he asked, gently pushing my hair back behind my ear. Again, I nodded into his shoulder. I didn’t want to go to my first pregnancy appointment without him. “Call me after you’ve made the appointment and I’ll make sure I can get off work.”
Morning of the appointment:
“Good morning Mr. and Mrs. L. Go right on in. The doctor will be with you in a moment.”
I took my place sitting on the end of the examining table while Logan paced the room. “Would you stop that? You’re making me nervous,” I requested softly, reaching my hand out to him. He smiled, took my hand, and came to stand next to me, stroking my hair softly as we waited the last few moments for the doctor.
One urine test and a handful of questions later, we were ready for my first sonogram. ‘Just to make sure everything is going well in the beginning,’ the doctor assured me. “There we go. Not much to see right now, but it looks like you’re about four to five weeks along,” he said with a smile, pointing to a small area on the screen. I heard Logan’s deep exhale over my shoulder and wondered how long he’d been holding his breath. “That’s our baby,” he whispered to me, his warm breath on my neck. I turned my head to look at him and saw the amazement in his eyes as he watched the sonogram screen. Then the doctor started talking again and I slowly turned back to him. “It’s too early to say for sure, but just from my past experiences I’d say it looks like there’s a pretty good chance for twins here.” “Tw-twins,” I stuttered, looking back at the sonogram with wide eyes. “It’s a possibility. I figured it would better to warn you now rather than shock you with it later.” “Twins,” Logan whispered, still sounding just as delighted as before. “Twins Laura!” he was definitely excited. I was too, don’t get me wrong. But twins would definitely delay OCS. Maybe keep me from going all together. Leaving one child at home would be difficult enough, but two…I wasn’t sure I could do that.
Later that night I expressed my concerns to Logan and he pulled me into a bear hug. “You worry too much. If you decide that you want to stay in the Army after you have these babies, and you still want to go to OCS, we’ll make it work. Even if it means that you wait for a few years until you’re more comfortable with leaving them at daycare. Yes, it’s going to put a delay in our immediate plans, but we’ll make it work. I promise. And if you decide that you’d rather be a stay-at-home mom, or go back to school and pursue a different kind of career, that’s fine too. It’ll be completely up to you, but whatever it is, we will make it work. Don’t worry so much. We’re having a baby. Maybe two. Be happy! This was already part of our plans, it’s just a little sooner than we had expected.”
Over the next few days my thoughts were focused on my pregnancy and nothing more. Over dinner one night I brought up an idea to Logan. “Now, this may just be a passing phase I’m going through, and it may have come about when my cousin was having her twins and my mom and sisters and I got to talking about the fact that she didn’t want to know their genders. But I was thinking about it, and it could be kind of fun to keep the genders a surprise until these kids are actually born. I mean, if we are having twins, then knowing the genders would make it way too easy to go all matchy-matchy with everything. But if we don’t know the genders, then we could go with a neutral theme or color scheme for the nursery and get outfits for them that may match, but at least be in different colors, whereas if we knew we were having two girls, we might be tempted to get them exactly the same things. What do you think?” He thought for a moment before answering, “that could be fun actually. But what if we’re only having one?” “Maybe we find out the gender if we’re only having one, because with one, we’re not in danger of matching them to anyone else.” “Sounds good. So if we’re having one, we’ll find out the gender. If we’re having two, we’ll keep it a surprise,” he clarified, and I could see him thinking over the idea and becoming more accepting of it. “We can go ahead and start brainstorming nursery ideas. You know, boy themes, girl themes, neutral themes, color schemes,” I suggested, suddenly remembering that the guest bedroom was going to be turned into the nursery; A new project that would hopefully take my mind off of the delayed OCS application. “How about we work on that this weekend after we call everyone?”
Fast-forward a few weeks.
“Good morning. Ready for your second sonogram?”
“Yes I am,” I said with a smile, lightly squeezing Logan’s hand. “Alright, well then let’s see what we’ve got here,” the doctor said, turning the sonogram screen so that Logan and I could see it better. “There are definitely two babies in there. Congratulations, you’re having twins, and everything looks to be in order,” he smiled. “Twins!” Logan and I exclaimed together. Now we were both excited. “Doctor, we’ve decided that we don’t want to know the genders. We’ll keep that a surprise,” Logan informed the doctor. “That’s fine. We’ll just call them babies A and B then.”
So now I can’t help but wonder if this dream was born of the discussion at my sister’s house over the weekend (because my cousin is just about ready to have her twins and we actually DID talk about whether we would want to know the genders of our children before they were born), or if it’s a glimpse of the future. As much as I don’t believe in precognition and that sort of thing, it was just one of those dreams where I can’t help but wonder. There are a few things that I will say if this WAS a glimpse of the future:
- In a couple of years, I look pretty damn good. The Army is good to me, at least as far as my appearance goes.
- Our marriage is still going strong. The distance and difficulty of Army life has indeed strengthened our bond.
- Fort Bragg (I’m pretty sure I saw a Bragg sign in the dream) seems pretty nice.
