Dreams and Nightmares after an Abortion.
As I have researched further into women's experiences after abortion, dreams and nightmares seem to be common occurrences. I have posted some dreams women have shared with me here.*Warning* Some of these dreams can be graphic or disturbing. If you feel like they might upset you, please don't read them. If you start reading them and they upset you, please don't read further!
Why would I post things that are so graphic and upsetting? Unfortunately it seems that a lot of women are haunted for a period of tIme afterwards by graphic and vivid nightmares - and they think they are 'going crazy' or that something is wrong with them. In sharing what women have told me about their disturbing and upsetting dreams, I am hoping to help other women feel less 'alone' about the sleeping trauma they may be experiencing. If you are having trouble sleeping, or having dreams or vivid nightmares, it might be reassuring to know you are not alone in this.
- When do nightmares start? - They can start Immediately after the procedure, and do seem to lessen with tIme. The quicker you 'heal', the sooner they seem to go away.
- Why do I have these awful dreams? - The nightmares that women with PASS experience are very sImilar to the nightmares that war survivors with PTSD experience. When a traumatic event happens to you, and you are shocked, or upset, or felt 'out of control' in regards to it, your mind can respond by processing those feelings at night while you sleep, and the feelings come out in 'nightmares'.
- What can I do to stop the nightmares? Things to do to help avoid nightmares - avoid caffeine after noon - if the dreams are bad, cut caffeine out completely! Try to get at least 20 mins of exercise each day. Also try writing down your dream once you wake up - keep a pad and pen beside your bed for this. It may be upsetting, but it helps to get the feelings out and examine them, and leads to the dreams stopping sooner. Participate in an abortion recovery and support group as soon as you feel ready - most women report the dreams/nightmares leaving after they have successfully gone through a healing program.
Note: This section is not accepting any more submissions at this tIme - please post all dreams and nightmares and discuss any submitted dreams at the Dreams & Dream Interpretation Message Board
Dreams
- In one of my dreams I dream about me being chased by and unseen force that is trying to kill me.At one point of the dream I get on my knees, put my hands together and pray for help.Then I see a bright light and my little boy and he says "why didn't you want me mommy", "Why didn't you love me", and then he says I can't help you and all these scenes flash before me of every thing that I have ever done wrong in my life and in one of the scenes it shows the abortion over. then I wake up.
In the second dream I dream that me baby is a toddler, and were are out shopping at wal-mart and someone has come to take hIm away. I kiss hIm and I tell hIm that I love hIm and he goes with the person.Then I see his father(whom I've haven't spoken with in years) an he is following me around.Then the scene changes and I am walking down the school parking lot and as I get closer, there is wreck and cop cars all around and I begin to run back the other way yelling for trevor, and then I suddenly remember telling hIm goodbye.Then I wake up. I think that the person who took hIm was an angel and I believe that my baby trevor is in heaven with all the other aborted babies.
- Im only 19 ... this wasn't supposed to happen to me. The babys father and I broke up and it turned out that he was cheating on me and I didn't even know it. A week after I found out that I was pregnant, my decision was already made with no questions asked. I knew what I had to do and it was probably the most heart wrenching decision I will most likely ever have to make in my life. I found out that I was 6 weeks and four days along. I went in to the place a week before to make sure I was in fact pregnant. The babys father went with me and pretended to be so supportive of what was going on. They had taken a sonogram and given me a picture of the baby. That's the only memory I have of hIm/her. I kind of want it to be a girl so well refer to the baby as her instead of it. ANYWAYS, I always have this reoccurring dream. I went away to school because everyone thought that it would be the best thing for me to keep busy and occupied. It didn't work. I had morning sickness and missed classes. Now, all this is true. The dream I constantly have is that I am laying in my bed and my roommate listens to the radio, so I know that I had to turn it down and I SWEAR to all of you that I was up and the night before the termination, I rented Here on Earth, at the end of the movie theres a music video for Nick Lachey & Jessica SImpsons song "Where you are" I just sat there and replayed the song and just cried and cried. So, when I got out of bed, the radio was already off and there was this little, tiny, beautiful little girl who had the features of me and her father. She was beautiful. She was standing at the radio with this song playing and she was smiling and she looked at me with her fathers eyes and smiled and said "Dont be scared Mommy, Im okay now, REALLY, I love you still dont worry and youll always be my mommy" and she had the cutest little laugh and she winked and ran out the door and i sat on the floor crying to myself and all I could think of was that she was okay and she knows I didn't want to do it and I do love her ... forever.
- Every night I have a different dream but it always starts the same way.
I see myself going into the operating room and I see the nurse getting everything ready and I watch her strap my legs into the stirrups and I see the doctors coming in and putting the IV's into my arms, then it goes to my nightmare.Like I said they are always different every night but they always include my 2 year old daughter. And in every dream something bad is going to happen to her and I'm trying to save her but it seems like I can never get to her in enough tIme no matter what I do. Right at the point of my dream where it seems like I'm going to get to her to save her I wake up so I never know if I'm going to save her or not.
One of them is me and my daughter are eating at a dinner outside on the patio and were surround by woods. While were eating we see smoke coming from a few miles away, someone comes out of the dinner and says we have to leave theres a forest fire and its coming are way. I turn to get my daughter and I cant find her anywhere. SO I start looking for her and I see her going into the woods I yell to her and she turns around and runs back towards me so I go to get her and a crowd of people block my way, after I finally get to her I run down a hill to are car and get her in the car and we start to drive away as where driving a tree falls down in our path and we have to stop the car so i get her out of the car and try to run with her but somehow she gets out of my arms and runs into the woods right where the fire is, I run after her and I can feel it getting hotter, I feel like I'm going into hell, right at the point where I can grab her arm I wake up.
Another one is I am following my husband in my car and he's in front of me in his car with my daughter and I watch them get into a accident as I get out of the car to run over to help pull them out I smell gas and my husband gets out but as I'm trying to pull my daughter from the car I wake up so I never know if I saved her or not.
- I've had so many dreams since my abortion three weeks ago, but the one that i remember most vividly that really touched me emotionally and troubled me the most is the one I'll be sharing with you today: I know my parents would be devastated if they found out that their innocent 17 year old daughter had an abortion, so i never told them about it... i dreamt, however,that they found out about it.. my dad reacted the way that i knew he would.. he was embarrassed and just disappointed to the point that he couldn't look at me... but my mom... oh my mom's reaction really was something... she rushed me to the hospital to try to see if they could somehow bring the baby back.. that maybe there was a chance that it would still be alive.... i cried in my sleep... my mom wanted my baby to be alive, and the only reason why i had terminated it in the beginning was because i thought that she wouldn't have wanted me to keep it.... so it was as if i killed my baby for nothing... i cried so hard that i woke up and discovered that my pillow was soaked... i cried the following days... it was a very painful dream.
- Before I had the abortion I had one recurrent dream- that I had to tell my child that their father didn't want them, that she had "no daddy." Since the procedure, I've seen my little girl as a toddler in a white T-shirt and diaper. I also dream about the ultrasound and how I felt when I saw it (the ultrasound). As I am working through my hatred for the father, I dream of hIm less frequently, but he reports seeing body parts in the corners of his room usually in the middle of the night when it is dark. He's so apathetic these days, I don't really buy his story. I also see my child growing up and us talking. I never have scary dreams about the abortion except that I dream about the other women who were there with me and I wonder how they are doing. Each day the nightmares fade and the good dreams get more vivid. It hasn't been even 2 months yet so, I can only hope things get better.
- i had my abortion thinking that i would be able to get through it. not being able to forget it but also not dreading over it like i had been. my dreams have become less frequent since i was 15 now being almost 18 ,but my dream that still causes me to lose sleep and wake up crying is i was walking down the street full of adults shopping and minding their own business when i had to go to the school down the street to pick up mychild from school. well, when the bell rang to let out the kids they all came running out with cut up bloody faces coming up to me screaming "how could you do this to me i thought you were supposed to love me i hate you i will never forgive you but never leave you." i never knew what that meant when they said " i will never leave you" then i talked it over with a close friend and we have concluded that the reason why they said i will never leave you was because i didn't ant to have the abortion but i had no father for the baby and my mother forced to have it done. i would sit and cry and hold my stomach telling the baby i am sorry that this was going to happen to it and i hope you will forgive me for hurting you and i think the baby new that i was truly sorry and that she forgave me and everyday that goes by that first baby that was in me has always stayed in my heart and everyday i talk to it by praying to god and asking to talk to it and i tell the baby how my day as and i ask it how it is doing and sometImes i can actually hear it talking back. i have never found out whether it was a boy or girl but i know the baby is still close with me in my heart.
- I've had lots of different dreams, some are okay and others are just torture, one of the worst was when I dreamt that they had given me my tiny dead baby to take home with me and I kept it on a chair in the living room under a tissue and screamed for someone to take it away. I eventually lifted off the tissue and was amazed to find a tiny living baby
- Name: Sue
The first 2 are the most often.
I am going through it again. They have a TV and I ask to see it. At first it doesn't make sense then I see a heart beating before they turn it away. I now they lied to me about it being like a cancer inside me. Why didn't they show me my girl before. I know shes a beautiful girl and I love her. I try to ask them to stop but they think Im asking about the pain. They lied about that as well. When they understand they carry on and says its to late. When the noise starts i hear someone scream. It feels like my insides are being sucked up. I can see a glass bottle filling with blood, so much blood. I think something has gone wrong and Im dying. I try to say Hail Mary so that if I die Ill go to heaven but I forget the words. The nurse sees me looking and stands in front of me. When it stops she takes the bottle away and looks at it. I try to ask what it is but they dont answer. When I ask to look they dont understand. She says that they are both there. Im helped off the table and as Im leaving i look back and see her putting something in a bin but then the door closes and i think was that my girl and I failed her. In my dream sometImes they show me what it was but then they pour it over me and Im covered in blood. SometImes I try to push it back inside me but it wont go no matter how hard I try. SometImes I dream that I try to stop it by pushing them away from me but then they hold me down and I feel like Im being raped. I think of this during the day and wonder what I could have done different to make them stop.Im looking in a trash can and among the rubbish i find my baby in a plastic bag. Or sometImes I find her in the toilet. I try to put her back together but its not all there and the harder i try the worse it gets.
I hear someone crying for help. The house is burning. I run round looking for her. I can see my girl and hear her but she is being burned up in the flames and I cant reach her.
Im giving birth. There is a lot of pain and Im on my own. There is no-one to help me and Im crying for my mother but she doesn't come. Then there is a nurse who takes the baby but when she gives it to me to hold there is only pieces.
Mom and Dad (my real mom who died not my step-mom) are waiting by the front door with my daughter. She is beautiful. I dont know what to say. They ask what is the matter and when I dont answer they look inside me cos they didn't know. I feel ashamed and turn and walk away and I think Im going to hell.
- Name: Sky
I'd like to start by saying that my nightmares are becoming less frequent. Some nights I dream that I'm frantically trying to piece together my aborted baby like a puzzle.
My worst and most reoccurring nightmare is that I'm at the clinic on the table and the doctor is performing the abortion. My boyfriend turns to me and his face is slashed to pieces and I'm screaming "NO DON'T TAKE MY BABY, HE'S A PART OF ME HE BELONGS INSIDE OF ME" and I'm so frantic to keep my baby inside of my that I sit bolt upright on the table, steal the cup from the doctor and drink the aborted material to "keep my baby inside of me"
- Name: JustaMom
I have had several bad dreams since my abortion. I have 4 children ages 14,10,8 and 6. I have dreams that I can't find them, or that they have been kidnapped. Right after the abortion I had a re-occurring dream that I was standing with my sleeves rolled up and there was blood on my hands and arms--up to my elbows. I looked helplessly at my husband--Like "do something, can't you see there is blood on me" but in the dream he doesn't come help me or acknowledge the blood on me. In the dream he says "Well you did it". I also have dreams of tiny embryos. I never thought that having an early first trImester abortion would traumatize me like this. I was very self assured going in to get the procedure. This whole experience with nightmares and sadness has taken me totally by surprise. It is torture daily.
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