whatever it was I had been watching on television during the day...or really, anything I had even thought about during the day.  

Its been twelve years since I've given birth, and I still occasionally have "baby" dreams...dreams in which I am pregnant, or giving birth, or have a small baby.  Not sure what that's all about.

I kept having two recurring dreams.  Either I gave birth to a deer, a tiny little deer that I carried around in a blanket in my arms.  Or I gave birth to a baby but kept leaving it lying around and forgetting it everywhere.

was when my twins were about 18 mos and I dreamed that I had lost my DD in a department store. I was looking around frantically and got to a huge staircase that went down several floors, around in a square pattern, and it was open in the middle all the way to the bottom -- so you could see down about four floors below you, and that is where I saw my DD lying motionless.

I rarely have nightmares but this was the worst ever.

When I was pregnant with Sam and stuck on bedrest, I watched a LOT of discovery channel and other geeky stuff.  I had nightmares about a lot of the weird documentaries I saw, like about hermaphrodites.  It totally freaked me out, which is just nuts since not only had we had multiple ultrasounds (and Sam was NOT shy) we had genetic testing done.

After both boys were born, I would frequently wake up in the middle of the night, absolutely convinced that they were trapped under the covers by my feet and their faces were covered.  I'd jump up out of bed and rip all the covers off and couldn't calm down until I figured out that the boys were safely in the their cribs and had gone to check on them.  My husband did not enjoy this aspect of new parenthood.  

The first time we left Sam overnight, he was 15 months old, and I was already quite pregnant with Ben.  We just went to a resort about an hour away from home and planned on staying 3 mights.  On night number 2, I woke up in the middle of the night completely convinced that Sam was supposed to be in the room with us, but had somehow gotten outside and fallen off the balcony.  I was so hysterical that I woke people up in the adjacent rooms.  I had to take a shower and call my mom in the middle of the night to check on Sam in order to calm down and get back to sleep.  

Obviously, I'm not a great sleeper.  I'm a very light sleeper to begin with, and I wake up frequently, completely disoriented.  It's pretty common for me to take 3 AM showers when we travel, so I can wake up enough to figure out where I am.  Pregnancy and new babies seem to ratchet all of that up a notch though, with added hysterics.

I tend to dream very vividly, which DH calls my blessing & curse... I can have the most vibrant, fantastic, creative dreams in the world, but my mind can shift those same powers into horrific nightmares. Since I've pretty well trained my mind to jump back into dreams- the good ones are really good- it works the same with nightmares, and often I have to completely get out of bed, read something to get my mind on another train of thought and then go back to sleep. DH has night terrors sometimes but he can't really remember them. I remember dreams for days.

My worst nightmares weren't about the baby- but my daydreams sometimes took a nasty turn. I'd look over at her playing with a toy and suddenly my mind would flash and she'd fall and impale her head on something, or I'd be carrying her and I'd picture myself accidentally dropping her on pavement and swore I could see all the blood- oh they are nasty and they hit me fast and give me pause. I still have them too.

I love my dream book, though, I do tend to dream about symbolic things. The most recent was a dream I had when I had a long-running cold about owning way too many pet turtles (7 or 8, I used to own 2) and not being able to take care of them properly so their tanks were all gross and they would snap and hiss at me when I tried to get them out and they'd fight... very upsetting to my turtle-loving self. I looked it up  and Dream Book said confined or dirty turtles signified illness. SO WEIRD.

oh ha. I just totally bored you all with my dream stuff. Yeah, I'm That Guy at the Watercooler who likes to talk about her dreams and bores people. Carry on.

starting when my son was about 3 weeks old - he started a short colic episode, and all the company left after the baptism.  

they looked like tom clancy novels come to life - and this was before 9/11.  i did have some typical new baby scenes too, including can't find the baby stuff.  

i'm fascinated by these mother nightmares. i have them and a lot of other mothers i know do too. for me, they have come after my kids were born and for each kid, it's a different theme. DS #1 it's usually around drowning. DS#2 i've lost him either in a store or i've left him in the car with the keys and someone is about to drive off with him. ugh. these dreams are awful and they haunt me.

here's my half-baked theory about them: these dreams are meant to shore up our vigilance so we don't forget the enormous responsibility we have in caring for these vulnerable little people. or another version of that would be, it's a way of releasing the stress of the vigilance. something along those lines...

all the time, and pretty good recall as well. Have had them all my life. I used to keep a dream journal; actually, I think I'd like to start keeping one again. But I think I'll actually get around to writing in my actual journal a bit more before I commit myself to another writing project...

about these parenting nightmares is how universal they are.  I've had the one of losing my child in the store, my baby becoming an animal (in my case, a cat), natural disasters, etc.  Who knows... maybe it is some way of ensuring we are extra vigilant, as Stacey mentions.  

I too have waking nightmares in which I vividly imagine my daughter being taken by some creep...or the baby falling in the pool. I've also had visions of knives being driven into my baby's soft spot, and of cars running them over. It can drive you completely around the bend if you focus on it too much, I think.

When I was pregnant, I had the strangest dreams. As one example, one night I dreamed that I gave birth, and when the baby was handed to me, it was a snake. I wasn't afraid, exactly. I still loved it. I just couldn't figure out what was happening. I tried to feed it, and I couldn't get it to open its mouth to put it on the breast. The nurse said to me "you have to tickle her under the third scale to get her mouth to open". So she opened her mouth, and I sat there feeding this snake that I loved, but was a bit repulsed by. That is without a doubt the most bizarre dream I have ever had. I can still remember the feeling of that snake breastfeeding...and the absolute confusion that I felt!

While we were waiting to adopt from China, and absolutely sure we were getting a girl, I had a dream that we got a boy - and I woke up in a cold sweat panic!

I also had a dream while waiting that our toddler was sitting at a table taking apart and putting together a clock. Our son has very strong mechanical ability, just like the kid in the dream.

I had these constantly while pregnant... usually a dog or cat. In one case teenaged human twins with dark hair (one boy, one girl). My favorite is when a lab puppy clawed its way out of my abdomen and in my dream, laying bloody on the bed, all I could think was "they really should have picked that up on the ultrasound".

Just totally grotesque dreams, all the time. Never, though, a snake.

I found myself having rather dark dreams about dead loved ones who wouldn't meet my baby.

When she was born, the most disturbing dream I had was one in which I cut of dd's arms, directly before a woman actually did just that.  When I heard about it, I almost died.  I must have been afraid I would just accidentally majorly screw up, because in the dream I was just sort of cutting her hair and then cut off her arms.  Then I realized, to my horror, that her arms wouldn't grow back, that I had condemned her to a life with no arms.

it seems some dreaming - before and after - is normal.  

i also think some new mommies may have PTSD.  this is my own hypothesis.