A friend from church in another state, Kelly, is newly pregnant and recently blogged about the strange baby dream she had.   I was about to post a very lengthy comment at her blog, so I decided to post an entry on my blog instead and leave the link at hers.

I conclude as Strem did, that you don't have to be pregnant to have strange baby dreams.  Here's my experience: 

While I was in college, I dreamed that I gave birth to quadruplet boys; named them Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; and gave one each to my mother, my two sisters, and my sister-in-law to raise!  LOL  When I related the dream to someone else later, she remarked, "You didn't keep one for yourself!"  I said, 'No -- I gave them to four women who know how to raise boys!"    [Of course, I had no earthly idea at that point, that I would end up raising two boys -- and two girls -- of my own.]

Another night (still in college), I dreamed that I was babysitting a two-year-old boy who was getting too rambunctious, so I opened the top of his head (you didn't actually see gory gray matter when his head opened; it was more like a flip-top on something plastic) and took his batteries out , and then he was very calm...

What on earth did I eat before I went to bed those two nights?!?!

Strangely enough, I can't think of any strange baby dreams I had while I was actually pregnant.  I guess those two took care of it!

From what I recall of the study of dreams in Psychology classes (of which -- as many of you know -- I took waaaaaay too many), there are two basic theories of dreams.  One is Freudian, so I won't get into it here; the other is Activation-Synthesis Theory.  Activation-Synthesis makes a lot more sense to me.  It states that neurons in your brain continue to fire, somewhat randomly, while you sleep at night, and your brain takes the various persons/places/events that are brought to mind and tries to make sense of it.  So that's why you may suddenly have a dream that includes someone you went to high school with, someone you may have only known by name and never even met...the neuron in your brain that contains that person's face, fired, and there you have it.

I think because a first-time mommy's mind is preoccupied with thinking about the baby during the day, it makes it more likely that her brain will fire a neuron that triggers a baby thought, and then your brain tries to make sense of it that night.