I don’t want to have kids of my own and the more I think about it the more I think I don’t want kids out of fear. I am afraid of all the pain of giving birth, I am afraid of not being able to care for a child, I am afraid I wouldn’t love them the way children should be loved, and I am afraid I would lose my cool and hit one of them one day, this last one being the worst of my fears. Maybe one day if I stop being afraid of all of these things I could possibly have kids, but until that day comes I consider myself to be child-free.
A lot of this fear of having kids comes through in my dreams. I have had dreams that I found twins on the side of the road and I picked them up and took them to the police to find their parents and I was told that since I found them I have to be their mom now. I have had dreams where I am giving birth and the kid gets stuck halfway out and no doctor in the hospital can unstick them. I have had dreams where my family disowned me for being pregnant, which is nuts because they are hinting at a desire for grandchildren and have been for a while now. I have had dreams where I misplaced my kids and now I am going to jail because I am an irresponsible mom. I don’t have these dreams every night, but they make the rounds of nightmares in my head, usually right around the same time that I dream I have to take a final exam for a class I didn’t know about all semester. :eek:
Yes, I do get dreams about being pregnant and having kids. Heck, sometimes I daydream about it.
The latest dream about it, a couple of weeks ago, was weird. I was visiting my parents and all of a sudden I woke up one morning telling them that I was pregnant (without their knowledge), and that I had given birth to a just born, but clean, girl, who was wrapped up in blankets and in a carrier. Weird…
I dream of having kids more than I dream about actually being married and growing up old with someone.
I’ve never had dreams about being pregnant of having children of my own, but occasionally I’ll dream about other people’s kids.
Just the other morning I had a scary dream about going to jail for tossing my friend’s middle child into a pool.
I do a lot of dream analysis. In my folk tradition, we believe that dreams are messages. Dreams about pregnancy are usually portents of abundance or wealth, good dreams. If you have a baby and he’s bad or malformed or causes problems then it’s an omen of trouble coming due to a betrayal of trust in your romantic or professional life. If you have several children, it portends great happiness coming your way. We have a saying that “babies come carrying bread under their arm”. That means that children bring with them abundance, the means with which to care for them. It’s a good symbolism.
I’ve had dreams of being pregnant before, but a lot of dreams are all reduced to one thing:anxiety. Being pregnant in a dream and not being able to handle it just speaks to the way you feel about yourself, the confidence you have (or lack) in your ability to manage issues in your life at that time.
So are you saying that in your tradition, nightmares about being pregnant/giving birth have no relation to an actual awake fear of being pregnant or giving birth?
Are our nightmares scaring us all away from childbirth for no good reason?
Yes, it happened to me. I opened a thread once about such a dream, pretending it was a real situation and only disclosing it was a dream at the end of the post.
It went this way : I was picking up my 5 yo son at a library (her mother and myself were divorced, and she had custody) and was chatting with him, and in particular congratulated him about his ability in English (he was attending a bilingual pre-school). At which point he told me that he would soon learn Korean too. A bit surprised, I inquired further, and he told me that he and his mom would soon be living in Korea. My ex was working in international business, and would travel a lot, so I figured she had gotten a job there. I was infuriated. In all likelihood, in such a situation, I would only be able to see my son (that of course I loved dearly) once or maybe twice a year. And she hadn’t even had the decency to tell me about this. At this point, my ex, who was in the library, showed up. Massively pissed off, I confronted her about this. And I woke up.
Note that absolutely nothing in this dream had any basis in reality. I’ve never been married, let alone divorced. Never had even a mere girlfriend working in international business. Don’t know a kid attending a bilingual pre-school. Never knew anybody living in South Korea or intending to move there.
The weirdest thing is that upon awakening, I still felt strong feelings for this imaginary son, and it took me several hours to stop missing him.
I’ve dreamed about breastfeeding before. I also had a dream that I was pregnant and thrilled about it, until the ultrasound showed us (me and unidentified father) that it was deformed. Then I was devastated and heartbroken about aborting it.
I’ve also dreamed about real children that had been in my care being in danger, like an extremely vivid and frightening dream about the three-year-olds from my preschool class being hit by a car that jumped a curb. I went to the hospital to see them and they were all in little bodycasts.
I find it interesting that so many of us have dreams about our dream-children being in danger or needing to defend them from an attacker. I wonder if it’s some sort of primitive instinct to protect our offspring, even when we don’t have or want any in reality.
As for it jiving with my hopes : well, I’d like to have a kid, and love them, and this one was bright, which is a massive plus. At 5 (It’s an approximation, the age wasn’t clearly specified in my dream), kids are becoming pretty interesting, so the age was to my liking too. I’ve no preference for gender, and now I don’t remember anymore what he looked like.
Here is my original post about this dream, written on the same day. Interestingly, my memory of the dream has changed : actually, I dreamed a kid with a bilingual mother, not attending a bilingual school. Also, from the tone of my post and the smiley, it seems I was more depressed than pissed off by the news.
I don’t have children and don’t want them. I can’t recall any dreams where I had any. Though I did dream last night that I was a prostitute. Oddly enough there was no actual sex in that one. I’m not sure what that says about me.
Not to hijack the thread, but part of the dream was a contest of sorts where people would pay to see us on awebcam (dressed) and the goal was $100000. I won in a couple minutes. Like I said, it was an odd dream.
I once had a dream that I was getting married and as I was walking down the aisle I realized my husband had gone behind my back and changed our wedding colors and decor to a baseball theme. He was waiting for me at the front of the aisle standing next to home plate. I sobbed the whole way down the aisle but I still married him. I guess sometimes dreams don’t have a meaning.
I’m a 49-year-old guy who has no desire to be a parent. However, I do remember a dream in which I had an infant offspring named Hesketh (name probably inspired by this guy). I was gushingly thinking/saying “A baby!” and feeling very loving of my new son.
I’d like children at some point in the distant future. I’ve had more dreams about children than I have about having a partner.
I’ve had a number of dreams where I was pregnant or giving birth, father usually unspecified. I’ve had a few nightmares about being an unfit parent that made me feel simply awful.
Wow, I didn’t realise some people had such intense dreams about parenthood. I’m 24, F, and definitely in the not wanting children camp. I honestly cannot remember a single occasion where a child/infant or pregnancy was involved in a dream that I had. Obviously that doesn’t mean it never happened as I cannot remember every dream I’ve ever had. But the possibility of dreaming about future children never even occurred to me.
I wonder if it’s because there just isn’t really a huge child presence in my life? Some of my old high school friends have had kids but they’ve also moved away and I only really communicate with them occasionally via email and I have only ever met one of the kids for about half an hour. The youngest relative I have is now about 10. I saw him once when he was 1 year old and once when he was 8. There are no children that I come into regular contact with and parenthood is not something I think or daydream about except the occasional fleeting idea, like, 'Wow, I would never make my kid do X if I had one" where X is, I don’t know, go without a meal as a punishment - or something. Usually in response to something I’ve seen out in public or whatever.
I wonder if I came into more regular contact with children I would dream about it?
I am 27, childless, and very much want kids. But like others in this thread, I frequently have dreams about being pregnant, giving birth, or having a baby that are anxiety-ridden. Sometimes the child is my sister’s child and I am forced to take care of it because she abandoned it.
Posting again because I happen to had another one tonight.
This time, I was the father of four, the last one just recently born. I can’t tell much about them : they seemed to be mostly blonde, mostly boys, and mostly 4-8 yo or so. Including the one who was just born. Actually, they were all born recently, despite their age. In fact, it was a pleasant dream, since I was pretty happy with the situation (and I probably would, especially if, as in my dream, I could somehow bypass the baby/toddler period). The mother was barely present in the dream (It seems I’ve no interest in keeping the mother around in my children-related dreams).
My concern in this dream was that I thought I should stop procrastinating and finally tell my mother I had 4 children. Why I didn’t want to tell her is anybody guess, because the dream didn’t offer any explanation. Lousy Freudian plot, if you ask me.
I’m not terribly surprised by this dream, since I’ve been thinking about children a lot, these days (mostly thinking that I won’t have any, in all likelihood). And it didn’t remotely have the emotional charge of the one I mentioned above.
