My supersized superego

It's 2am and I can't fall back asleep because I had a bad dream. I sound like a child, but it's true.

I've never been in love with the work if Sigmund Freud, or even Carl Jung for that matter. I'm not really too invested in the whole idea of developmental stages that involve one's anus or genitals, nor am I in support of the notion that all my son really wants to do is have sex with me. Those theories are just a little too far fetched in my book.

One thing I can say though, is that there is some worth in Psychodynamics regarding dream interpretation. I mean, we all need to admit it, dreams have to symbolize something- they don't just come out of nowhere. Although I don't spend hours trying to identify phallic symbols that arise at any given point in the splotchy memory of my dreams, I do attempt to understand what these night terrors might represent in my real life.

So tonight, I had a dream that I left Avery in my car in the freezing cold winter for like a 6 hour span of time and didn't realize it. So when I remembered, I ran outside and got him out of his carseat where he had been sitting shivering and crying hysterically. I was trying to comfort him.... and then I woke up. Phew.

Once I had a dream that I was pulling him down the sidewalk in a sled and a car ran over him. Once I had a dream that he was in his car seat and he went flying out of the window of my car. Once I had a dream that I dropped him on accident off the scenic overlook over Lake Willoghby on Mt. Pisqa.

I've had several dreams of him falling down flights of stairs, or getting burried in snowbanks, or getting burned in a fire. I've even had dreams of discovering his bottle is full of poisionous toxins while he was suckling on it.

What is the darn worth in these dreams, anyway? Why do they haunt me like the plague?

So here's my interpretation: I have this mommy guilt that just won't go away, and I don't know where it came from. But it's there, just sitting in my collective unconscious, eating at my sole. I'm living with an enormous, blown-up, supersized superego.

Am I the only mom that has horrible, awful dreams that I am neglecting my child? Am I the only parent who has night terrors on a regular basis that my child is hurt, sick, lost, or in pain?

These dreams only add to my inability to leave Avery with anyone besides someone who I trust more than my own self. They contribute to my anxiety about ever even thinking about leaving him overnight, anywhere, anytime, with anyone.

I have this innate fear of experiencing the loss of my child, and I'm sick of trying to understand it.

I finally get my baby to sleep through the night, and now I'm up at 2 in the morning in a cold sweat and whimpering.

What a mysterious paradox motherhood has presented me with... I had a baby, and at the same time, I turned into a baby myself.