The Baby In Your Dream

Your dream baby is very special to you. It doesn’t matter that perhaps the baby in your dream is the child of another woman, it is still the baby of your dream. Like any baby, it is something new and vulnerable that has come to life – come to your life. The important question is, what is it that is new and growing in your love, in your work, or in yourself? Or perhaps it is about vulnerability. Therefore the answers you give to the following questions are important in helping you discover the truth about your dream baby.

However, if you are pregnant or hoping for a baby at the time of the dream, your dream baby may be reflecting your hopes, fears or intuitions about pregnancy. Many pregnant women have very anxious or strange dreams about their baby. So do not feel that such dreams are predictions. They are often ways of releasing anxiety or of expressing hopes regarding your unborn child.

How would you describe the condition or situation of the baby?

The baby in your dream might be hungry or ill. It might be wonderfully advanced and already able to speak. Whatever the condition, this is a description of what is happening with the newly emerging or vulnerable part of you. Therefore try to put into words what you see or feel the condition of the baby is.

As an example of this, here is a fragment from a man’s dream: ‘I am responsible for bringing up a baby boy. I feel very happy about it and feel committed to it.’ So in this case the condition of the baby is that of being loved and cared for.

What are your feelings or thoughts about the baby as it appears in the dream?

What you feel and think about the baby gives an indication of how you are relating to the new or vulnerable part of yourself, or what worries you are discharging. Clarify them to recognise what may be helping or hindering this new experience in your life.

An example of this: I had a dream that I had a child and had to cancel a test because I had to take care of the baby. I was breast feeding the baby, because it is healthier to breast feed than to give formula from a bottle. The person that I had been seeing wanted to know what I thought I was doing. The question was in an accusatory manner, like I had no business breast feeding my own baby. Then I left the baby with my friends and left. When I came back, they were feeding the baby Tabasco sauce because they ran out of milk. This shocked me because I thought my friends were more responsible than that.

So there are two issues here. The first is the struggle and strength to oppose what is felt to be right in the face of other people’s opinions. The second is that other people can injure your vulnerable and growing self if you let them take over your decisions. In either case it is clear that you have the intuitive knowledge to see what is the best way to nurture your baby.

Is the dream baby my own child?

If we are parents we often dream about our own children. Occasionally such dreams express concerns we have about our own child. We have noticed something ‘out of the corner of our eye’, and the dream puts this into focus. But often such dreams use the child to illustrate a developing part of you. This is because your actual child has characteristics unique to itself. They may be adventurous, playful, thoughtful or highly verbal. To understand your dream you need to define how you see and feel about your child.

For instance a woman dreamt she was sitting on a window sill and was frightened of falling. So much so she couldn’t move. Then she reached out and took her small son’s hand and climbed into the building away from danger. In describing how she felt about her son, she said he was courageous and confident. So her dream was showing how, by reaching out for her own confidence and courage, however immature, she could overcome her anxiety about falling/failing. Her child calls out her inner strength to meet the situation and overcome the danger.

Can I help the baby in any way?

This is an important question to answer because your dreams often present you with opportunities to change or to grow. If the dream is dealing with an emerging part of your nature, or a new love or project, protecting and helping this new dimension of your life is important. So, for instance, if your baby needs feeding or affection, sit quietly and imagine yourself feeding the baby, or giving it affection. Do whatever you feel is needed to help it.

Is this an intuition about a baby’s or my baby’s situation?

Quite often we dream about awful events in connection with our baby or child. Because these can be incredibly disturbing it is important to understand their meaning. As a first step there are at least two types of dreams that deal with disturbing events. The first type of dream is called ‘representative’. And the following is an example of it.

I am on a country walk with my wife and small son. I look back to see my son fall down a deep hole. I rush back to see him drowning, and wonder whether I should jump down to help him. Then suddenly he is okay and with me again.

The father was incredibly worried that it showed a bad situation for his son. But as we explored it we realised that the son represented his marriage. He had a terrible row with his wife the day before, and he was frightened that it was the end of their life together. The son in this dream was the result of their marriage, what they had created together. So if the son had died it would have shown the father feeling their marriage had no hope of a future. But the dream showed the son fully recovered, showing that even when he was feeling bad, his dream showed him a different outcome. So it represented the father’s intense feelings and the possible outcome.

The other type of dream can be called direct insight or prophetic. Such dreams are usually not in any way symbolic and are highly uncommon. They do not include such things as are in the above dream which quickly switches from danger to ease. The following dream is an example.

One morning my wife woke and told me she had dreamt about the baby of two of our friends. The friends, a man and wife, were living about 200 miles from us. We knew the wife was pregnant, and about a week or so before the dream we had received a short letter saying their baby, a boy, had been born. We were not on the telephone at the time, so the letter was our only means of communication.

In the dream my wife saw the baby and a voice from behind her told her the child was ill. Its illness, she was given to understand, was serious, and would need to be treated with a drug taken every day of the child’s life. The reason for this illness and the drug use, she was told, was because in a past life the person now born as the baby had committed suicide using a drug.

In this dream very definite information was given that could be checked. I didn’t take the dream seriously, thinking it was some sort of personally symbolic dream. The dream was sent to the couple, and about a week later a letter from them said that the letter and dream had crystallised their already existing anxiety about the baby. It had not been feeding well and was fretful. On taking it to the doctor nothing definite could be found but special tests were made in hospital. From these it was discovered the baby was dying. It lacked an enzyme which was needed to digest calcium. To compensate it was given a drug, which it has had to take every day of its life to make up for the lacking enzyme.

The dream did not represent a situation, it described it clearly. Also it could easily be checked. So if you are uncertain, always go for the representative dream, as prophetic dreams are extremely rare.

So the questions to ask are: Is this dream making a direct statement? If so can I check it for accuracy? If it is a representative dream, ask yourself what it represents symbolically, and go through the questions above.

Summing Up

From the answers you have given to the questions see if you can recognise what new thing has come into, or is emerging, in your life. What do you feel vulnerable about? Is it to do with someone you love? Is it a new attitude you have to the way you express yourself? Or perhaps it is a new project you have undertaken.

When you can connect the dream with your everyday experience, consider what the dream is depicting in its drama. Is it saying the baby is healthy and strong? Does your baby need support? Is it nourished? Whatever you have discovered from looking at your dream baby, try to use the insights in your everyday life. Build them into the way you feel and think, and watch your baby grow.