Researchers believe that dreams may be a way for our subconscious Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. See Full Reference to work through issues that are currently on our mind. Unsurprisingly, many pregnant women report pregnancy-related dreams Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. See Full Reference . You may dream about being pregnant or dream that you are meeting your baby for the first time. Many mothers even dream about the sex of the baby.
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At other times, pregnancy dreams take a frightening turn. Mothers-to-be may have nightmares about labor and delivery, or dream that something bad has happened to the baby. A common theme for dreams during pregnancy involves conflict with the father.
While pregnancy-themed dreams may be partly due to hormones, similar dreams have also been known to occur after giving birth Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. See Full Reference and in expectant fathers. Talking through dreams with your partner may help both of you to assimilate your changing roles.
Mothers-to-be who report feeling more anxious or depressed during the day are more likely to experience bad dreams. Similarly, research consistently finds that first-time mothers tend to have more pregnancy-related dreams than those who have already had children.
Daytime fatigue is a commonly cited reason for the uptick in dreams during pregnancy. It seems logical that women who are tired will nap more, leading to more opportunities for dreaming. However, pregnancy causes profound changes to our nighttime sleep, as well.
As we sleep, we progress through various sleep stages. Dreaming tends to occur during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, at the end of each sleep cycle. During a regular night, we may experience four or five episodes of REM sleep, but we often forget our dreams by the time we wake up several hours later.
By contrast, for many women, pregnancy-related discomfort causes fragmented sleep with multiple nighttime awakenings. Interestingly, these disruptions may actually cause pregnant women to get less REM sleep overall Trusted Source Oxford Academic Journals (OUP) OUP publishes the highest quality journals and delivers this research to the widest possible audience. See Full Reference . However, people are usually more likely to remember their dreams if they wake up in the middle of a dream cycle, making it appear that pregnant women have more dreams.
Changing hormones may also be to thank for altered sleep patterns during pregnancy. Not only do hormones cause a roller-coaster ride of emotions during the day, but some researchers also theorize that the increase in vivid, detailed dreams may be linked with higher levels of progesterone Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. See Full Reference that arise in late pregnancy.
In most cases, vivid dreams during pregnancy are a normal and healthy way to process emotions. In fact, several studies have found that mothers who had more masochistic dreams during pregnancy show higher levels of depressive symptoms during pregnancy, but go on to have shorter labors Trusted Source Elsevier Elsevier is a publishing company that aims to help researchers and health care professionals advance science and improve health outcomes for the benefit of society. See Full Reference and a lower risk of postpartum depression .
Improving the quality of your sleep and reducing nighttime awakenings may help cut down on vivid dreams. Try following pregnancy sleeping tips such as sleeping on your left side and avoiding liquids before bed to reduce disruptions to your sleep.
Keeping a dream journal may help you decipher thought patterns and prevent nighttime worries from keeping you awake. You can also reach out to your support system or try meditation, yoga, or other prenatal courses. Feeling more secure and confident about your pregnancy can help you relax at night so you can get better sleep.
"Some dreams can give a glimpse into a future event. That said, some dreams are just random 'offloads' of an overworked or stressed mind," says Carla Manley, a clinical psychologist in private practice.
From a biological perspective, you can blame the REM (rapid eye movement) sleep phase. Your brainwaves during this phase are almost as active as when you're wide awake, and this is when your most vivid dreams occur.
Vivid dreams, more frequent dreams, and a greater ability to remember dreams are all common during pregnancy. This happens because your hormones are shifting, which can have a major impact on your emotions.
One 2018 study involving 143 pregnant women and 125 nonpregnant women found that those who were pregnant experienced greater anxiety in their dreams than those who were not. This study's results also found that pregnant women were four times more likely to dream about being pregnant than their nonpregnant counterparts.
The continuity hypothesis would suggest your mind hasn't let go of those anxious thoughts from your waking hours. Experts agree that fear-based dreams focused on pregnancy can reflect your anxiety of what might happen if you actually got pregnant.
"This can be your psyche's way of allowing you to notice and confront any pregnancy-related fears. For those who don't want to be pregnant and find themselves worried about changing abortion laws, your mind may be offloading these worries and intense fears into dreams while you sleep," Manley says.
"If someone is trying to become a parent or is scared about new life changes that a pregnancy can bring, this dream may symbolize unconscious concern about an unborn child," says Dr. Nereida Gonzalez-Berrios, psychiatrist at The Pleasant Dream.
If you haven't been thinking about pregnancy in your waking hours, a pregnancy dream could represent more generalized feelings of stress or anxiety. This is especially true if your pregnancy dream was stressful in nature and you've lately felt overwhelmed in daily life.
Manly says stress dreams often reflect something other than pregnancy itself. "Some dreams just represent an overworked mind. If an individual is stressed in some way, the psyche often offers messages in a way that will capture their attention," Manley says.
"Someone who dreams of being pregnant may actually be expressing a sense of fertility or fruitfulness in an important area of life such as work, home life, self-care, hobbies, or creativity," Manley says.
Gonzalez-Berrios agrees that a positive dream about pregnancy could be your creative process taking shape in reality, encouraging you to nurture your innate talents and personal growth while working to accomplish goals.
"If someone has experienced a recent miscarriage, this is likely a wish-fulfillment dream," Gonzalez-Berrios says. This interpretation ties back into Freud's theory that some repressed wishes manifest in dreams, often without your conscious awareness.
Freud uses the example of dreaming about the death of a loved one as a wish that is often repressed. He suggests that if you consistently try to avoid heavy or heartbroken thoughts during the day, they'll stay repressed and keep showing up in your dreams.
"In one way, this dream symbolizes joy and ecstasy, and on the flip side, it reveals an unconscious fear of taking responsibilities in waking life. Some anxiety and uncertainty about a fresh beginning can also lead to these dreams," Gonzalez-Berrios says.
During dreams, you may see images and feel emotions, and some dreams can even trigger ideas. Some people remember their dreams after waking up, whereas others can have multiple dreams, yet are unable to recall a single one in the morning.
But while vivid dreams can occur in anyone, pregnancy seems to spark more of these types of dreams. Rather than fuzzy images you can barely piece together, these dreams seem like real life. You may wake from these dreams needing a moment to distinguish between the dream and reality.
Some pregnant women believe that they have more dreams during pregnancy. It is possible that they are actually dreaming more in an 8-hour sleep cycle, or the increase may be due to sleeping or napping more hours each day.
One of the best ways to deal with unpleasant dreams, and hopefully reduce the frequency of these types of dreams, is to talk through them. You can do this with your doctor or a friend, or you can journal your dreams.
Even if you're normally the type who doesn't remember your dreams when you wake up, you may suddenly find you're elbowing your partner in the middle of the night to recount the details of your latest wacky dream. Or you might find yourself drifting off in the middle of important meetings into daydreams about chubby cheeks.
Your dreams and daydreams may be so richly detailed that you may wake from them wondering, was that really a dream? While they may make you feel like you're losing your mind, pregnancy dreams are healthy and normal, and they may even help you stay sane.
Of course it's possible to have pregnancy dreams at any point during pregnancy, and plenty of women report strange dreams early on. That said, many moms find pregnancy dreams and daydreams peak during the third trimester as sleep is more disrupted and they increasingly find themselves imagining what life with a new baby will be like.
There's no normal way to dream about sex during pregnancy. You might fantasize about sex with your partner, an old fling or your celebrity crush. Dreams can involve plain old vanilla sex or wilder S&M-style fantasies you may (or may not have) dreamed up in the past. 2ff7e9595c
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