Washing Our Worries Away Through Dream Work

I was pregnant with my second child at age 35. Doctor visits were different this time, just two short years after having had my first child, a healthy boy. Because of my age, the doctor sent me for genetic testing.

Although such testing can be a blessing to parents who discover severe disorders in a timely way, I knew many who’d been told frightening things about their unborn children that turned out not to be true at birth, and I was scared.

I was told my baby had a 1 in 21 chance of having Down’s Syndrome. Because my choice was not to take action that would endanger my child’s life, I decided not to take further tests, which risk miscarriage. I decided to trust the journey sent to me. But that choice didn’t take away the fear and anxiety.

Then I had a dream: I am in an antiques store, filled with tables, flowered china, and big furniture. The carpet is a gray-blue. It is daytime. Near the center of the store is a tall, round wooden table, small in diameter. On it is a porcelain soap dispenser with a zebra and flowers painted on it. It reminds me of one my grandmother had in waking life in her pink-tiled bathroom. In the dream I am my current age then, and pregnant.

I had been attending the Haden Institute Summer Dream Conference for several years. I participated in group dream work where a dreamer shares a dream while other group members take it in as if they had the dream, forming a mini movie for themselves as the dreamer describes the scene, action, and details. The dreamer then listens as the group comments on their own “individual dreams.” Some statements evoke deep “ahas” in the original dreamer and some simply feed the one who spoke them.

At the conference that year, my group worked my pink bathroom dream. The comments ranged from being fairly literal (the baby was a girl because of the pink bathroom), to archetypal knowledge, such as that antiques can represent family history. The stripes and zebra on the soap dispenser made one dreamer think she might need to concentrate on subtlety and the gray areas in her life (like the carpet in the antiques store).

Finally, one member commented that, in her dream, the presence of the bathroom and the soap dispenser indicated that all of her worries would be “washed away.” That was the biggest “aha” for me. I felt at peace immediately.

It seemed to me the Divine was sending a message that everything would be fine, no matter what. I knew I could stand in the gray and live in the unknown a while longer. I took many of the group’s observations away to chew on throughout the weeks ahead.

The next day at the conference, I had a follow-up “aha” moment: My grandmother had her second, healthy son, my father, at age 35! Revelation washed over me and I gasped. I had a feeling my baby was going to be a boy and that he would be healthy and fine.

Shortly after the conference, I went for the regular 20-week ultrasound. In a pleasantly-lit examining room, my husband and I were told that the baby was “perfect” and that we were having a boy.

It was a miraculous feeling. That baby, now 16, has presented an amazing set of gifts and challenges, although not the particular ones that a baby with Down syndrome would have. They are those our family was called to receive. Perhaps the suggestion from the testing that the baby might be "different" was a hint of the future after all. And the Dream Maker reminded me all would be well.