The neglected baby

 I am in a large old communal building of some kind, it is institutional but with big beautiful wooden bannisters and stairs.

A family lives in one of the rooms. I become aware that they have left their baby in there, alone and unattended. I feel how awful it is for the baby to be alone - I feel and sense her, her aloneness, the emptiness and quiet of the room, her abandonment, sense of annihilation even - before I even go in to get her.

I break into the room and take the baby, I comfort her, hold her, she is responsive to me.

In the corridor outside I meet the family - in particular I recall the Dad. He is tall, cocky, arrogant, defensive. I shout at him "You should never leave a baby alone, EVER, NEVER, there are absolutely NO circumstances in which what you have just done is OK. NONE, what so ever."

I am repetitive and forceful in my argument, he seems to take it in.

Post script

I have been having a difficult couple of weeks when I have this dream, feeling often despairing and hopeless. In bed before I fall asleep I am tuning in to this sense of despair. I wonder where it comes from, is it me? Someone else in the house has been having a difficult time, am I feeling her feelings I wonder?

I am wondering all this lying in bed when I spontaneously place my hands on my solar plexus. This feels very calming of the despair, I feel a sense of "sunshine" - something gold and warm. This is the first thing that has genuinely touched this sense of despair in the the last two weeks.

I fall asleep holding my solar plexus then have this dream.

I am struck by the solar plexus being the seat of the sense of self, and how this dream perhaps represents a place of annihilation in my infancy - when my mom (and primary mirror) retreats to bed in depression when I am 6 months old.

I am curious about the building in the dream too. It is very like the convent that Sister Catherine Mary lived in - she was a nun in the hospital when I was born, her hands were the first to hold me. We would go and visit her once a year in the convent which was a very peaceful and tranquil place, I loved her Irish smiling eyes and warmth of voice.

Why was this lost baby (the lost inner me) in this place?

I don't know - but the retrieving of this part of me feels very deep and profound - like a soul retrieval.