We all dream 3-4 times each night, but 90% of these dreams don’t come close to dreams you have when you’re pregnant. Even though dreams during pregnancy can get very vivid, weird or even nightmarish, the explanation behind them is entirely natural.
The tremendous physical and psychological changes that come with bringing a new child into the world resurface in your dreams. The excitement and joy, but worries, stress and fears too don’t just disappear as soon as you close your eyes.
To understand why dreaming in pregnancy can get weird, we’ll look into how and why we dream. Then it’ll be easier for you to recognize how tremendous changes that pregnancy brings into your life affect your dreams.
Why we have weird dreams in pregnancy
Each night we go through several phases of sleep. One that is particularly important is the REM phase. Aside from the characteristic rapid eye movement, the REM phase is when you dream. The non-REM periods are here to help your body to rest and recover. These sleep cycles change a few times each night, and for the most part, you are unable to remember your dreams because the REM phase takes only about 25% of total sleep time.
The dreams you can remember are usually the ones you had just before waking up, for example when the alarm rings in the morning or if you had to visit the bathroom during the night. As your pregnancy moves forward and your baby’s size and movements become more noticeable, you are more likely to wake up during the night due to the pressure on your bladder and discomfort.
Aside from this purely physical side explaining why you are more likely to remember your dreams during pregnancy, the intriguing part – why your dreams get so weird – is in close connection to your emotional world.
Uncovering the hidden meaning of dreams
Emotional life continues during the night and fills in the content of your dreams. In fact, dreams serve as a psychological processor for daily events, fears, worries and anxiety that remain unconscious during the day. Dreams are here to help you cope with problems, stress and thoughts in a rather unique way, by playing out the possible worst-case scenarios.
In pregnancy, this mental function of dreams can go into overdrive simply because there is so much new happening to you every day. Your body is rapidly changing, and you have little to no control over what is going on. The fears about your baby’s health, or the future of your relationship, finances or how you’ll manage in a role of the mother all surface in your dreams.
On top of all this, your emotions tend to be more intense, and more frequent under the influx of the pregnancy hormones estrogen and progesterone. This reflects in the vividness of your dreams. Also, when you’re dreaming during the REM phase your mind works differently: thoughts and emotions are expressed as images, and the connections you experience between these events often seem completely illogical. The more intense the feelings are, the more vivid and weird does the content of your dreams get.
What weird dreams in pregnancy mean
In an entirely non-mystical way, dreams are related to your future, more specifically your future as a mom. Fears that might go unnoticed during the day like those about how will you manage your new role as a mum or the future of your relationship with your partner are processed during the night in the form of the symbols you encounter in your dreams.
Dreams are space where your subconscious mind is in control, and it often doesn’t follow the rules of logic. This is the reason why you encounter weird connections and intense scenes in your dreams. The universal symbols and themes that appear in your dreams in pregnancy very rarely have a literal meaning. Instead, you need to dig a bit deeper into your emotions and fears related to pregnancy to grasp what they are trying to tell you.
Even though the best way to understand the symbols that appear in your dreams requires an understanding of your current situation, many women at similar stages of pregnancy encounter some recurrent dream themes.
Common themes in dreams during pregnancy
As your pregnancy progresses your dreams change to reflect the common symptoms of each trimester. For example, first-time moms encounter entirely new sensations, emotions and situations in their pregnancy and their dreams tend to compensate for this lack of knowledge with unusual connections.
During the second trimester and the baby’s growth, the leg and back pains, bladder pressure, heartburn and other symptoms make it far more likely that you’ll wake up during the night. Also, this is the time when your dreams start to reflect the worries about your future life as a mum. As you enter the third trimester and the labour approaches, fear of childbirth also resurfaces in your dreams.
Some common symbols in dreams when you’re pregnant are:
Water-related dreams
Sensations arising from the fetal movements and the presence of the amniotic fluid can transform into dreams about the waves, ocean or water in general. Sometimes this type of symbolism can fuel the nightmares about drowning or water rising uncontrollably. In this case, the fears about lack of control over what is happening to your body combine with the images of water.
Dreaming small animals
The desire to know how your baby will look like or what gender will it be is one of the top uncertainties in pregnancy. Small animals, often cute and friendly but sometimes the ones with sharp teeth as well, tend to represent your baby. Dreaming about deformed or scary children also happens, but keep in mind that dreams are not literal. They only represent your fear about what might happen.
Sexual dreams
The anxiety about the loss of control and the changes happening to your body, for example, can transform into sexual dreams, and not just about the sex with your partner. The dreams about your partner having an affair usually reflect insecurity about how attractive you feel together with the worry over how will pregnancy affect your relationship with the partner. The hormonal flood affects your sex-drive as well. If the actual sex is becoming more and more uncomfortable and you’re starting to feel frustrated, your dreams tend to compensate.
Baggage or a burden
One universal symbol, dreaming you are carrying some heavy luggage or burden you can’t let go, is often tied with financial worries. Bringing a new baby into the world is always a burden on the home budget and your subconscious mind is trying to cope with this situation in its own way. Again, no need to take this dream literally and interpret it as if you’re seeing your baby as a burden. Instead, your subconscious mind is trying to cope with worries in its way.
Hurting the baby in your dreams
Dreams in which your baby is in danger,and you can’t help, or dreams in which it’s you who’s doing something to hurt your child are common in the second and third trimester of pregnancy. These dreams can get very frightening but, again, these dreams don’t mean you’re going to hurt your baby. Instead, dreams like these are fueled by your fears about how you will manage the responsibility of your new role as a mum.
Dreaming about heavy physical work
If you’re a first-time mum and don’t know how labour looks like, your dream compensates with symbols that are sometimes quite literal, e.g. you’re trying to push something through a narrow corridor, or you’re doing some challenging physical work you can’t stop. Dreams related to labour naturally increase as your pregnancy comes closer to term to help you prepare mentally for the challenge that lies ahead.
What to do if you’re experiencing frequent nightmares in pregnancy
Pregnancy is not an easy time for any woman, but some life situations can make this period especially stressful for you. Complications in pregnancy, lacking support from the baby’s father or your close family, together with financial or health worries can quickly turn into nightmares. Deeply rooted fears like the fear of miscarriage or fear of labor can become the nightmare fuel, too.
The initial step to take when your dreams prevent you from sleeping through the night is to ensure your sleep is uninterrupted as much as possible. Learning the relaxation or meditation techniques, you can use at bedtime, together with keeping your bedtime as stress-free as a possible help.
One comforting fact that might help you cope with the weird dreams in pregnancy uncovered by the researchers is that nightmarish dreams are linked with shorter labor duration.
If you reach the point where you can’t get a good night sleep because of the frightening dreams, it’s time to share your worries with a professional. Your body needs sleep to nurture your baby’s growth, so your midwife or ob-gyn can offer you guidance or direct you to a mental health professional who can help you deal with the underlying issues.