Having Dreams About Being Pregnant? Here’s What That Might Mean

While sleeping, humans cycle through five stages of sleep; rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM sleep which occur in stages 1-4. Dreaming typically occurs during REM sleep, but we tend to cycle through the various stages in a rollercoaster pattern.

Following brain activity via EEG, researchers were able to visually prove that while drifting off to sleep, humans begin sleep stage 1. This then cycles through each of the four stages all the way to REM sleep and repeats this pattern throughout the sleep period.

In fact, in an 8-hour sleep session, we cycle through each of these stages around four or five times. This means that on a given night, we spend approximately two hours dreaming. Dreams, of course, can occur at any stage of sleep but are most vivid and memorable when they occur during REM sleep.

According to author Lori Loewenberg, pregnancy dreams don’t necessarily relate to fertility and feelings about being pregnant and having babies. “Pregnancy dreams are typically related to something else in your life that is in a growing and development phase,” the dream analyst told The Cut.

In some instances, the act of "growing a baby" could correspond with an idea you're hatching, or a hurdle you're facing in your waking life. It doesn't necessarily have to be a challenge you're experiencing, but could perhaps be related to creativity and growth.

Maybe you're stuck in a job that you don't love and you dream about starting your own business, but you keep pushing those thoughts aside during the day. Your subconscious could be playing out those ideas coming to fruition in the form of a pregnancy.

If we dream about being pregnant with twins, Loewenberg believes this could mean we have multiple concerns; ideas or issues within the same challenge that our subconscious may be working through.

"Maybe you’ve got two things on the burner, or maybe there’s several aspects to this one thing," Lowewenberg explained. "And so it may feel like you’re juggling a lot of things and your subconscious is relaying it to you in the form of multiple fetuses."

There are countless websites that will offer exact dream interpretations for every pregnancy dream scenario. For example, some state that dreaming of seeing a pregnant woman walking down the street means a marriage or partnership will flourish. Others indicate that if you dream about someone being pregnant and they're sad, then you're about to receive bad news.

Another interpretation of dreaming of someone else being pregnant could mean that you're ready to take on new challenges in your own life or are considering making a big change. A pregnancy dream could also be taken at face-value and indicate that you wish to add to your family in some way.

How to analyze your dreams

If you're having dreams that you would like to interpret, sometimes it's best to take on the task on your own rather than seeking meaning from outside sources. After all, you know yourself best. Only you know what's going on in your own life, and your subconscious may be trying to help you work out your emotions. Here are some ways to interpret your own dreams:

• Keep a dream journal: you can't interpret what you don't record
• Record how you feel in your dream and describe your emotions
• Come back to the dream and analyze each aspect individually
• Focus on your feelings after you woke up and how you felt
• Identify images, symbols, and other people in your dream

Come back to your notes periodically and work through each aspect to see if there are any common themes or underlying messages. Compare your dreams and feelings in your dream with what is going on in your daily life to see if you can find a common thread to help you work out the dream meaning.