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Most pregnant women experience an increasing frequence of exceptionally vivid dreams, including nightmares that can be terrifyingly intense.
The vividness of pregnancy dreams is primarily caused by changing hormone levels. The contents or subjects of your dreams, especially nightmares, often reflect either specific or general fears and anxiety regarding the welfare of your baby, your own well-being, and/or your concerns about the pregnancy, the birth experience, and/or your ability to be a parent. Your dreams may reflect fears or concerns that you are not even aware of on a conscious level, but that may be worrying you on a subconcious level.
Quite simply, dreaming is one way that our minds try to work through and resolve potential problems or fears. In interpreting your dreams during pregnancy, however, it's vital to understand that dreams virtually never literally reflect or foretell waking-state reality.
For example, in my 24 years of practice as a midwife, I've discussed dreams with thousands of women. At least 25% of them report having dreamed about giving birth to an animal or non-human creature. During my five pregnancies, I've had vividly realistic dreams of giving birth to puppies, delivering a large rubbery egg, and pushing out a huge hairy shapeless blob. I'm happy to report, not one woman, including myself, has actually given birth to an animal or non-human creature. In other words, don't take your dreams or nightmares too literally!
On the other hand, you shouldn't ignore your dreams, especially those that repeat themselves, assuming that they are meaningless. It's useful to pay attention to your dreams and invest effort in figuring out what your subcouncious mind believes is important enough to pay attention to. If you have repeated dreams about a particular pregnancy/birth/newborn topic, this is a key that you should pay particular attention to this aspect.
One key to interpreting your dreams is to simply make a point to remember them in as much detail as possible. Keep paper and pen beside your bed and try to write down your dream(s) the moment you wake up before you forget them. If you can't write them down because you need to use the bathroom right away, for instance try to replay your dream in your mind until you have the chance to write it down.
Pay particular attention to how you felt about various aspects of your dream. Did you feel afraid? Confused? Helpless?
The true significance of your dreams is based far more on your emotional responses IN YOUR DREAMS than on the subject matter of your dreams.
Then read over what you have written and ask yourself, "Why on earth did I dream this?" Often you will quickly recognize an association with something you have heard, read about, or experienced.
If you were upset or frightened by something in your dream that wouldn't frighten you in waking life, ask yourself why this frightened you in your dream.
Once you figure out what potential problem or situation could have caused your subconscious mind to bring this particular situation up, you can then go ahead and address the problem and, in most cases, ease your mind, literally.
If you repeatedly have upsetting dreams, talk to your midwife or doctors about this.
For instance, if you have repeated nightmares about having a breech delivery or hemorrhaging at delivery, you need to tell your midwife or doctor about this and find out specifically how they would deal with such complications as well as learning if there is anything you can do to prevent such problems.
Above all, remember that having vivid dreams and nightmares is very, very common during pregnancy and that even if you have terrifyingly awful dreams, this doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you, physically or mentally!
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