tick tack tick tackkk

i had a dream this morning about being 4-month pregnant. the news was broken to me by the baby's father (name/face non-identifiable), thereby solving the mystery of the slightly bulging belly, easily mistaken as result of over-eating. i remember feeling happy and content in the dream, and then, perplexed and somewhat horrified once i awoke from it.

could this be a sign of my biological clock ticking? a woman's biological clock starts to kick in her late 20s, and i've just entered the latest of my 20s. if a dream is any indication of a person's subconscious desires, then i say my clock is working like clockwork. while i feel much younger mentally (also what with current professional transition), perhaps this is my body telling me that i'm ready for *GASP breeding???

it makes me think about maternal instincts as displayed by my 5 year old beagle after she gave birth to the 3 puppies. she knew exactly when she was supposed to feed them, and where she was supposed to lie down so the puppies, eyes not yet open, could find their ways to her teats. when her milk was about finished, she would still let the puppies suck on her, if only to provide comfort. this happened only when she was feeding. now that the puppies have grown to be 2/3 of her size, she fights and plays with them as any other dog on the street. i often wonder if she knows they're her own.

but back to me. the thought that i might be displaying certain symptoms of a ticking biological clock is an unsettling one. throughout our early 20s we hear about older female acquaintances being single one day, and married 3 months later without so much as to a dating period. this was unkindly and teasingly referred to as acts of desperation, but i begin to see how that invisible push towards nest-building can happen to a woman (and man, for that matter). as much as my girl friends and i refuse to succumb to social anxieties towards turning 30, we might not be able to run away from this physical and mental shift in our own systems. the sense of urgency is simply part of the phenomenon called nature.

having said that, this is not the first time i've had pregnancy dreams. the first two both happened more than 4 years ago, when i was far from feeling possible maternal instincts. in the first dream, i was in a delivery room with my young cousin, both of us in delivery position and competing in every manner possible--who was screaming louder, who was pushing harder. we would glance at each other and then re-focus on the task at hand. i was squeezing and pushing so hard and willing to win, and eventually shot the baby out like a space rocket, catapulting the bloody thing across the room. the second dream featured a much smoother delivery, except instead of a human baby i gave birth to a fetal pig (think biology 12).

i don't think i'll go into what those two pregnancy dreams said about me. i'm pretty happy to think those were just dreams.