The Weird and Wild Dreams of Pregnancy

When you are expecting, every night is an adventure in dreamland.

by Teri Cettina

When I was four months pregnant with my first daughter, I dreamt that I went through a quick and pleasant labor only to give birth to…a fuzzy squirrel! The cute little rodent immediately hopped off the labor table and scampered out of the hospital into the nearby woods. In another dream, my new baby was as small as a dollhouse figure, and I kept misplacing her. And in a later nighttime escapade, I forgot to feed my cat for months, at which time it morphed into a squalling, hungry baby.Sometimes I felt like I was losing my mind—my sleeping mind, that is. As it turns out, however, unusual dreams are a common part of pregnancy. Some of them are downright strange, like watching a Tim Burton movie in overdrive. However, other dreams offer interesting insights into a pregnant woman’s hopes and fears about parenthood and can help prepare her for the big event. Dreams can also provide comic relief during stressful times. Laurie Agne of Olathe, Kan., now pregnant with her fourth child, still chuckles about a dream she had several years ago while pregnant with her son, Collin Michael. Agne was on bed-rest during part of that pregnancy. She passed the time developing a novel, which she handwrote because she did not yet have a laptop computer. So Agne wasn’t entirely surprised when a writing implement became the star of this dream:

I was full term and ready to deliver. In the delivery room was my husband Jeff, myself, the doctor (who was green) and former President Bill Clinton! The delivery proceeded just fine. Everything was normal until it came time to push. I began pushing and after one push I delivered a pencil with a tiny little face where the eraser should have been. It looked like a baby and cried like a baby but only its face moved. The rest was stick-still, since it was a pencil! Pres. Clinton, my husband and the doctor kept saying how cute the baby was and I kept shouting, ‘Doesn’t anyone see it's a pencil?’

Why do dreams turn wacky during pregnancy? Women can thank both their bodies and their minds, Hormonal changes, particularly an increase in progesterone levels, are thought to make pregnant women’s dreams more frequent and vivid. In addition, many exhausted pregnant women sleep more, leaving more time for dreaming. Many psychologists also believe dreams reflect a person’s internal emotional state. “Pregnancy is a very powerful, life-changing experience. Everything gets more intense during this time, and dreams respond in the same way,” says Raina Paris, Ph.D., a Los Angeles, Calif., therapist and author of The Mother-to-Be’s Dream Book: Understanding the Dreams of Pregnancy (Warner, 2000). As a pregnant woman’s body changes each trimester, her dreams will grow and change with her, says Paris. Dreams of tiny kittens early in pregnancy, for instance, may give way to dreams of whales, dolphins and other deep-water animals as the mother-to-be gets larger, Paris explains.

Full article text available upon request.

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