Anxiety is a normal part of life, except as humans we do not deal with it well. I have some bird feeders outside the window where I sit and write, and all the time the birds are looking everywhere even between pecks. In humans it would be a sign of great anxiety. They do not suffer the negative effects of anxiety because they express it all the time in their actions. As human we tend to bottle it all up or are frightened of it.
Your love and care for your child or children can trigger your mothering instincts with a vengeance. Being female and a mother holds with it an enormously increased anxiety about your children. You see all manner of things that might be a threat, and I believe that is what such dreams show. Your imagination for such dangers is enormously increased. This is natural in all mammals, and acts as a warning making you aware. It helps to check whether your child or children are okay, and if they are, say to the part of you that is worried, “It’s okay, I checked, but thanks for keeping me on my toes, you can relax now.”
When my son Leon was working for a year prior to entering Cambridge University, he met people who owned wolfhounds, and often walked the dogs. I went with him a couple of times. The dogs were kept in a large pen, and owner went to get the keys for the pen. While we were waiting at the door one of the dogs, a bitch, was kept in the house.
The bitch came to the door to look at us, then ran back, only to reappear again a few moments later to look at us anxiously. This was repeated a few times. I asked my son if she had pups and he said yes. So as soon as she saw we were strangers she rushed back to her pups to check they were okay. Then, for the short period we were there she continued to come and look at us with obvious tension, and then run back to check her pups.
This is most likely about your anxiety about caring for your baby, or it might also have a link with feelings you have about something that happened to you as a baby. It might help if you imagine yourself in your dream – while awake – and hold the baby and see if you can change what happens to your baby, hold the baby till it is okay and healthy. You might need to do this a number of times to succeed. See Secrets of Power Dreaming
Example: Hello, I am a single mom. My son Just turned 7 two days ago. I have had numerous dreams where he has died or the dream will be as of I can’t find him. I Just had a dream about my son and he was playing with some friends and one of them knocked at my door and said that my son was going to die. This woke me straight up out of my sleep. My son gets to the point now to where he wants to be independent at times and I try to tell him he can’t do the things he sees other big kids doing because he’s still so small. I am so protective of my son and don’t want to lose him. I wish I could stop having these dreams where he’s dead, or dies,or I Just simply lose sight of him in my dreams. I worry about him all the time when he’s not with me. What can I do.
And here is Anna’s reply: What I have found helpful with my children is to become more creative with this process. Often our fears make that we only see what could go wrong and it makes that we respond to any request with “you cannot do the things you see other big kids doing because you are still so small” and with that approach we have also sealed the door to any alternative. And so I learned to negotiate with myself and with my son. There is always room to find something your son CAN do, which will bring him one step closer to what he sees other kids are doing, without him going “all the way yet”. Sometimes this implies that he has to practice certain things first with you, before you can trust him to do it on his own.