There are not many posts on my blog featuring dreams, but this one from 2010 is one you could find mildly interesting.
Today, though, I want to ask you a question about dreaming. I know humans can dream the impossible, for instance that they can fly (I've had very pleasant flying dreams, although none for a while) or swim underwater for a long time without needing to breathe, and similar things.
But a dream I have had during the night from Monday to Tuesday made me wonder about just HOW impossible do we dream at times, and whether there is a difference between men and women in that respect.
Let me explain. I have never had children, never planned on having any, and now I am nearly 47, it wouldn't be feasible to have them anymore (and I really am not one of those women who feel the biological clock ticking louder and louder until it's too late, and then they regret not having had any). So, I am a "no kids" person, and don't feel like I'm missing out on anything.
Every now and then, though, I have dreamt that I had a child. The last time was quite a while ago, until the night before last: In my dream, I was heavily pregnant (and I mean heavily!), very close to giving birth. In the dream, I felt my huge heavy belly and how difficult and uncomfortable it was to shift it into a good position for sleep. I have never had a really big belly in real life (although I had a few kg more when I was in my mid-twenties), so I don't actually know from experience how carrying a lot of extra weight around feels. But in the dream, the feeling of being heavy was the overall dominating feeling, and it did feel so realistic that the first thing I did on waking up was feel my belly - phew! What a relief! It was the same as the day before, and I could move and get out of bed with the usual ease. This dream was not, I suspect, actually about children and being (literally) weighed down with responsibility, but it was about being weighed down by an unsolved problem or decision that I have not yet made. And of course having read, just before going to sleep, of a young couple who were having their first baby and how the wife was getting bigger every day etc. did influence my dream.
The question that I have for you now is: Is it only women who occasionally dream about being pregnant, giving birth and having children (because it is biologically possible for them), or do men have such dreams, too (and we all know it is biologically impossible for them)? If you go back to my point in the second paragraph of this post, I don't see why men would not have similar dreams. If we can dream about flying - which is biologically impossible for us -, then surely a man can dream to be pregnant.
Have you had such "impossible" dreams?
Nope. I have had some amazing dreams, some very strange ones but none so weird I was pregnant. Neither have I dreamt of being orientated sexually any other way than I am. I enjoy my flying dreams but rather wish I didn't have to do it naked all the time.
ReplyDeleteI've not dreamt of being sexually orientated any other way than I am, either, nor have I ever dreamt I was a man. I have dreamt of having super powers, though - getting mad at people who would not leave me alone made me produce fire balls out of thin air, which I was then hurling at them.
DeleteIf you are prone to sleepwalking, I suggest you lock your matches away...
DeleteNever done that, as far as I know :-)
DeleteHello Meike,
ReplyDeleteDreams are fascinating and to be able to interpret them would be wonderful. Such an insight it would give into our psychological make up.
Neither of us have dreamed of being pregnant and we are child free too. However, whilst one of us dreams often and remembers what has been dreamt, this is rarely the case for the other of us. What, if anything, does this signify, we wonder?
Hello Jane and Lance,
DeleteFor me, the ability to remember my dreams changes. I have phases when, for weeks or months at a time, I can remember something very clearly nearly every morning. Then again it seems I don't dream at all for ages (which is, of course, not true - I just can't remember it). At other times, while I remember clearly the kind of mood I was in, even transferring it for hours into the day, I can not for the life of me remember details of the actual dream.
That's a really interesting question. I certainly have 'impossible' dreams, but can't recall ever dreaming that I was a woman. I'll be interested to hear if anyone else does. If dreams are fed by our own conciousness, as they surely must be, then does consciousness echo our physical attibutes?! I have often thought that the difference between an experience in a dream and reality is very slight.
ReplyDeleteI've never dreamt (to my knowledge) that I was a man.
DeleteIndeed, the difference between what we experience in a dream and in realtiy can be very slight. I have never smoked in my life, but I once dreamt I was smoking, and I really woke up with the taste and smell of fags in my mouth!! It was rather unpleasant. (Nobody was smoking in my flat at the time.)
Maybe you had a baby in a previous existence, Meike? I don't really believe in reincarnation, but I really truly KNOW exactly how it feels to fly, so maybe I once did it? Dreams are strange things.
ReplyDeleteActually, Frances, I don't think so the dream was about really having a baby. I have a pretty good idea what it was about. Many years ago, I dreamt I found a mummified child under my bed (this sounds much more horrible than it felt int he dream). I knew it wasn't really about a dead child (or any dead person), but about something in my life that "died", was completely gone and lost forever.
DeleteI have had such dreams and I would think that men would not have such dreams. I think maternal feelings/instincts exist in a lot of women whether or not they have had a baby. I enjoyed reading about your symbolic interpretation of your dream. My dreams often do weave in things I've seen and heard in waking life.
ReplyDeleteI did not feel maternal in the dream at all, just really very heavy and weighed down, and was extremely glad to wake up and realize it was only a dream!
DeleteYes, I often have some element in my dream from what I've been doing, reading or hearing during the day.
Now, Meike, you have hit upon a topic that is very very much part of my everyday (every night actually) existence. I rarely have a night without one, two or three dreams. I have blogged about how I categorise them but almost all my dreams over the last six months have been night ponies and best and night stallions at work with most of them simply being night mares. I have long since given up any attempts at understanding them and I have a feeling that if I could I wouldn't like what I learned.
ReplyDeleteYou asked about dreaming in or of being a different sex. A few weeks ago I'd have answered in the negative - or at least answered that I could not remember ever having done so. However I did wake up recently wondering how on earth I had dreamt 'as a female'. Unfortunately I can recall absolutely nothing about the incident other than I woke up wondering that. I have long ago given up any attempts to remember my nightmares. If I dwelt upon them I'd never go to bed at night.
I remember your posts about your dreams, Graham, and I can't help feeling sorry for you because of them. If that was the thing I'd expect nearly every night to happen, I doubt I'd still consider my bed my favourite place, and sleep my dear old friend!
DeleteDreams are so intriguing, aren't they....I don't recall dreaming of being pregnant though I have been so in fact. But that doesn't mean I never have dreamed it as I don't recall my dreams that often...I do know what it is to fly, and when I was young was sure this had really happened to me, and not only in my dreams! But I have no thoughts about what a man would dream.
ReplyDeleteOh yes, they are so intriguing! I love the absurd stuff I sometimes dream - it makes for fun conversations during our coffee breaks at work :-)
DeleteWhen I was a child, I sometimes loved a particular place in a dream so much I wanted to go back there the next night - and believe it or not, I sometimes succeeded.
This is fascinating. I had a favorite book as a child, The Happy Family. I loved it so much that I tried to make myself dream about it by thinking of it when falling to sleep. And I sometimes succeeded so I can well believe you did too......
DeleteOur minds are capable of truly wonderful things, aren't they, Kristi!
DeleteI often dream that I'm on an airplane and it's really scarey because I am afraid of Flying, haven't taken a plane in about 15 years. I also dream the same dream as Woody Allen...that the elevator goes up and up and then it becomes like a train:)
ReplyDeleteInterestingly enough, I have never dreamt of flying, although I have developed an inexplicable fear of it over the past 3 or 4 years. I have not dreamt of work in a very long time, either; when I still worked at the library, I usually dreamt of work the last night before going back to work after a holiday.
DeleteI used to kind of assume, back in my youth, that I would one day get married and have children, but I never did. No specific decisions, nor any failed attempts etc involved - life just did not turn out that way. As for dreams, I am very interested in them, and have periodically found it very helpful to try and interpret my own. Reading this post of yours, it actually strikes me as kind of odd that I can't actually recall ever dreaming (nightly) of being pregnant - because I can certainly see that symbolism coming in natural in a lot of contexts, and there have been times in my life when that would not have seemed at all strange. (And I suppose if they seemed natural, I might well have had them in the past though even though I don't remember them now.) On the other hand, contemplating the question about cross-gender dreams, I can't recall any dreams "from the perspective of a man" either. And not even about flying like a bird, with wings. But I know I have dreamt (repeatedly, now and then) of sort of levitating, moving along without my feet touching the ground. (Very practical. I wish I could manage it awake as well!)
ReplyDeleteWhen I dream of flying, it is usually a movement very similar to swimming. Sometimes I need to push myself off the ground very hard, and lose height easily if I don't keep moving my arms, but there have also been flying dreams when it was all very easy and gentle, no struggle at all.
DeleteI don't believe I have ever dreamed of being a man, come to think of it. How strange. Mind you I have never dreamed of being pregnant as far as I know even though I have 2 kids.
ReplyDeleteI remember my Mum telling me that she dreamt of giving birth when she was pregnant with her first child (my sister). It's fascinating, I think, how different people's dreams are affected by what is going on in their lives.
DeleteI love, love to dream and love, love my dreams! I sometimes think I dream all night long. I have fantastical dreams, sad dreams, laugh-out-loud dreams, colorful and mystical dreams. Some I remember for a long time, some for just seconds or minutes. I always read before I sleep, but I do not remember very many times when my dreams related to what I had read the night before.
ReplyDeleteI love to sleep, and dream, too! Like you, sometimes I remember a dream for a long time, sometimes they are gone nearly at the blink of an eye.
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