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They do dream; I've watched them; their little eyeballs move back and forth under their tiny eyelids like nobody's business; they dream in fast forward.
Seriously I read once that they dream about being born, but you'd think they'd scream more if that was the case. Sometimes they dream your dreams; at least mine did, shared my dreams for several years, wigging out on the same nightmares, confused by the same endless broken circular staircases.
And one time my 2 year old woke me up in the middle of the night, standing by my bed furious he said, "WHAT WAS THAT THING THAT WAS CHASING ME? WHY DIDN'T YOU CATCH IT?" and I was sorry I couldn't give him a good answer.
the hubby and i used to say they were dreaming about being born. when they get a few months older, you can tell when they're dreaming about eating, because many make those little *smack-smack-smack* noises.
I had a recurring dream as a very young child that was a leftover from infancy (or even earlier). It did not include recognizable visual elements (there were shapes and colors, but not distinguishable then or now).
But there was emotion and a disturbing plot.
The best analogy I can think of is a beehive of blind bees. Only in the dream I was all the bees at once. Then, in the dream, all of the individuality is absorbed into the one hive mind. I have always assumed it was an infant's dream-interpretation of the development of ego-consciousness. It stuck with me.
To this day, I am very wary of having my individuality absorbed by the hive.
I like to think they're dreaming about being in the womb :) I like It's Raining Florence Henderson's idea - it seems to me that babies can't really distinguish between what's part of them and what's NOT part of them - they're surprised when they learn that they control their own hands, or that the object moving in the mirror is THEM, or that they don't control the thoughts and actions of MaMa and DaDa.
mgl's comment resonates with me because in junior high I won a competition with a poem describing a surrealish series of events that had been a recurring dream of mine for as long as I could recall. The winners were announced at the open house our school had and it was one of the few times that my mother chose to show up at one of these events.
Reading the poem she became quite agitated and we ended up leaving early so she could calm down. On the way home, she told me something that she said she'd never told anyone: when she was close to full term with me, she was rushed to the hospital and (almost) died in the ER. The poem I wrote was, according to her, a precise description of what she 'experienced' between the time that she lost consciousness and the time that the ER staff resuscitated her.
My almost-three-year-old dreams of stuff he's seen during the day. If he's watched a movie with something scary in it (Finding Nemo, for example, with the barracouda), he'll have nightmares. We curtailed his movie watching when we realised the effect it was having. He dreams like we dream: reliving the day, exaggerating or rearranging bits of what he has done or thought or wanted.
Amy, five months, dreams of eating. She suckles in her sleep. Right from birth she would smile during the REM phase, especially if we were playing music that I had often played before she was born -- maybe she was reliving her time in the womb, or maybe she just likes music. Occasionally she whimpers, and I always think it's because she's dreaming of having the boobs taken away from her. :)
Seriously, dano. Once she gained her composure a bit she said, "Well, it only makes sense. You've always been better with words than I am and you were there, after all."
Yeah, that is really cool, Fris. That 2 year old, btw, will soon be 14 & wants to build bombs. ;-)
You know, It's Raining Florence Henderson (can I call you IRFH?) when I was little I had a recurring dream a lot like the one you describe, only in it I was a sound, and there were lots of other sounds, and yes, they were all trying to pull me in to be part of the one big overwhelming bad sound, but I was resisting as hard as I could. I finally beat that dream and got out of the big sound and in the process saved a lot of other little sounds (this was around age 11 or so) and then I never had it again. I've never heard anyone describe anything like it before; I'm kind of blown away, I always thought I was the only one who had a dream like that.
I used to dream of magical snow people, who would arrive in my backyard on a flying disc and take me to their world of snow. No shit. I recall being very attracted to the female snow-lady.
My first nightmare I recall was of being dangled over the mouth of an enormous lion by one of it's claws. The more I screamed, the more the lion would laugh and shake me up and down until I felt like I was going to slide off its claw into the gaping maw of its mouth.
class cancelled? oh well, at least we got a great story of an extra sensory perception mommy-to-baby dream-sharing experience from Frisbee. that was a good one.
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