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I have had this dream once before, but it was a little different.

We were about to adopt, again. We were expecting another boy, yet when we were standing in line at this big placement ceremony, each set of parents was handed a slip of paper with their new child's name on it and our paper said "Mary."

I burst into tears and gave Pat a giant hug. We were getting a girl! We would have a a boy and a girl, just like I always wanted. I couldn't wait to meet Mary - we had immediately decided to NOT change her name, we were just struggling with finding a middle name. I think we ended up naming her Mary Frances Elizabeth, or some variation of that, after all of our grandmothers ("M" for Maxine, my grandma - I wouldn't peg Maxine on a baby - even in a dream!).

Mary was a beautiful little girl, 6-12 months old. She had dark hair and big brown eyes. I noticed that all of the other families around us had babies and toddlers with special needs - Downs Syndrome, etc. and I realized the placement ceremony WAS for parents adopting children with special needs. There was a program and I started to look through it, wondering what Mary's special needs were. In the program, I found some babies names were marked with a picture of an angel and quickly realized these were babies who were not expected to live. I panicked and started flipping through the pages, looking for Mary's name, hoping not to find an angel. I did not.

Mary's information said that she had cri du chat syndrome. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cri_du_chat I was upset, but thought that this was something we could deal with. We took Mary home.

At this point in the dream, Mary was no longer a girl, she was a blonde little boy who could turn into a cat. I was trying to convince him to stay a little boy and not turn into a cat any more. He was a good, obedient child, just very mature for his age. We lived in an apartment, a multi-story building, and I remember looking out at the building across and all of the windows and it seemed that many of them had tattered quilts and blankets hung over them, instead of curtains. The blankets were fluttering in the wind and I wondered what they looked like on the other side.

Mary was older then, and "catboy" was gone. I took her in the car to go talk to a bill collector. I was just a matter of a few cents off on a payment and they were yelling at me.

She had the money all laid out on the counter and Mary, who was now a toddler, impressed her by counting the money. I told them that we would have the full payment at the end of the week and asked them for patience. They did not have patience. I told them that they could wait. I pointed out that I had waited four years for this beautiful child and had needed that money for her adoption and they could just wait for their money. That caused the lady to have compassion. She agreed to wait for payday. When I loaded Mary back into her car seat, I praised her for being such a smart girl and counting the money.

I realized that the car felt sort of empty. Where was Isaac? I remembered that we had to give him up in order to adopt Mary. He had been a sort of "placeholder child" until our REAL adoption went through. When I realized that, I was devastated. I kept having memories of him and trying to shut them out, telling myself to not think about him and focus on Mary. But the memories were too much. I eventually went to email our social worker and find out where Isaac had gone and try to get him back. I hated myself for letting him go so easily.

In the end, we were attempting to complete three adoptions: Mary's, the other little boy's and Isaac's. I didn't know how we were going to pull it off, but no matter what I did, I was going to have my family.

This is the second time I have dreamt of letting Isaac go. The first time was 2-3 years ago. Some of Isaac's birth family came for him and I let them have him. After a day or two, I regretted the decision and hated myself, grieving and mourning over the loss of my little boy.

Maybe the loss of a child is a common dream for parents, as we are all losing our children a little bit each day as they grow up and need us less and pull away from us more - long before we are ready.