What are baby dreams about?

You can gain insight from thinking about any dream, no matter how strange. Only you, as the dreamer, have final say on what your dream may or may not mean. Each dream is unique.

The DreamWell dictionary provides information on how each dream symbol appears in dreams in general. Finding how experience babies in dreams can be a key to understanding its meaning.

Our emotions in dreams can help us understand its meaning. Pay attention to how you felt in the dream. Pay attention to how you feel about babies in dreams. See how you feel about babies now, in your waking life.

When decoding the symbolism of a baby in a dream, begin with the simple fact that a baby is new life. Ask yourself what’s new with you: a relationship, an idea, a feeling, a development in your character or personality?

A dream about finding a baby can symbolize finding something new within yourself, such as a burst of creativity or new wind in your sails.

A happy baby is the image of pure joy, and that too is a possibility for the symbolism. Do you feel happy just to be alive? Do you see the world with awe and wonder?

It’s common to dream about happy babies when in a rut, when life is tedious or boring, as a way of rediscovering the simplicity of laughter and giggles.

For example, a man dreams about saving a baby drowning in a pool. It symbolizes attempting to keep the part of himself alive—meaning conscious—that enjoys life but is drowning in adult responsibilities. He’s drowning in the personal sense, and in the dream his desperate attempt to save the baby shows how he feels about the possibility of losing his happiness.

People are known to dream about babies—especially crying ones—in relation to caring for basic needs: nutrition, comfort, protection, warmth and so on. A crying or neglected baby sums up the idea and the feelings involved. See: Crying

Ask yourself why the dream storyteller would choose a baby as symbolism over a child. One way to look at it is, a child is needy, but a baby is helpless. In a pinch, a child can figure out how to survive, but a baby can’t.

A baby is vulnerable, and in dreams a baby left alone or neglected can symbolize being in a vulnerable state. It implies the need to create a safe and stable space to live in, or a basic routine of care and attention. Most dream characters connect with your inner life. A vulnerable baby might symbolize a need to protect yourself emotionally and psychologically. If you don’t take care of yourself, who will?

If you don’t do it, something else might just step in and take over your life, namely, an archetype such as shadow or anima. A dream can express this idea as a bad person holding a baby captive. Kidnapping a baby can have similar meaning of helplessness against something much more powerful. At its simplest, it means something important is being taken, and what’s more important than your freedom and independence?

A baby can symbolize a sense of being entitled to have someone else take care of your needs. Fussy babies, pacifiers and highchairs are good symbols for childish fussiness or entitlement. For example, you dream about your fussy co-worker with a pacifier in his or her mouth. The symbolism is rather obvious. But what if the co-worker has a fussy baby with her at work? It’s not so obvious that the dream is still an observation about the person. The baby sticks out in that setting so it must be symbolism unless you really do have a co-worker who brings his or her baby to work.

For women who can bear children, the first thought after dreaming about having a baby is often, Oh, shit, does this mean I’m pregnant? It’s possible, yes, but less likely than pregnancy being symbolism.

For example, a young woman dreams that she gives birth and immediately realizes she doesn’t have time to care for her baby. Her work schedule won’t allow it, which is true—her job at a fast-food place doesn’t include maternity leave. After thinking over the situation, she puts the baby in a carrier bag and leaves it behind her workplace, symbolizing putting off having a child until she has a job that allows it. Keeping her job is her number one priority. Her desire to have a baby is behind it in the figurative sense. Putting the baby in a carrier bag is way of saying she’s putting off fulfilling her desire till the future.

If the thought of having a baby has been on your mind, it’s likely to be expressed in your dreams. Dreaming about a baby can be a way of saying you can start preparing. You can find the right work, mate, or living situation. You can prepare your body, save money, and get maternity coverage. See: Pregnancy

Your reaction during the dream shows how you really feel about the idea of having a baby. People who believe they don’t want children, swearing it will never happen, are known to change their minds after holding their “dream” baby in their arms. It’s an incredibly realistic experience that demands an honest response. They feel, smell, and hear their baby and even know its name. Then again, dreams can affirm a person’s decision to not have children.

Dreams can address decisions parents make about having more children. For example, a mother dreams about three dead fetuses connected by a string dropping out of her uterus while riding on the back of her husband’s motorcycle. The fetuses symbolize children she can’t have, now that her tubes are tied. Her hope was to have more children, but her husband doesn’t want to and he influenced her to have the procedure done. The dream shows her on the back of his motorcycle because he controlled the decision to make sure she’d never again get pregnant.

Parents dream about the care of their children and the responsibilities of parenthood. It’s particularly common for parents of young children to have anxiety dreams, often involving scenes of their children harmed or in danger. It’s usually just an exaggerated reflection of a parent’s diligence and concerns.

It’s possible to dream about the children you are going to have. Thousands of reports are on record of mothers and fathers seeing their future in children in dreams, sometimes years beforehand. In one case, a woman dreamed about the children she could have had. She had three miscarriages, but in her dreams the children are alive and well and a joyous part of her life. Perhaps they really are alive somewhere out there in the big universe. It’s not such a strange idea when you consider that every possibility exists in the quantum world.

Gruesome dreams involving babies hurt or killed can connect with fears, anxieties, emotional turmoil, and treacherous life conditions. Don’t take it literally when you have such a dream, but do take it as a sign that something really needs to change. In most cases, it’s a sign that the highly sensitive and vulnerable parts of yourself are going through the meat grinder.

Babies are immature, and the idea of immaturity extends beyond behavior to mean underdeveloped. In the image of the baby in your dream, you see something that will grow and develop if you put the time into it.

For a discussion of breastfeeding in a dream, see: Breast.

See also: Adoptions, Breasts, Caesarean sections, Children, Giving birth, Crying, Fetuses, Kittens, Smallness, Love, Miscarriages, Orphans, Pregnancy, Puppies

This interpretation is from ""The Dream Interpretation Dictionary: Symbols, Signs, and Meanings" and is provided by J.M. DeBord aka "RadOwl". He is the author of several acclaimed books about dreaming, the host of The Dreams That Shape Us podcast, and is a moderator of r/Dreams, one of the largest dream sharing communities on the internet.