Crazy-weird dreams

Every day I have a new, fantastical, often complex story in my head.

Last week I had this terrific notion of a Zen-like superhero who was an ordinary Catholic monk in everyday life, but in a crisis could lift a car off a person with one finger and the power of his super-concentrated mind.

Another time it was a murder mystery involving a still-living person in a shallow grave and another in an Otto bin. The heroine found both just in time before discovering the would-be killer who poisoned them.

I don't make up these stories and ideas because I'm an uber-creative writer. They just appear overnight, in my dreams.

Because I'm pregnant. That's the only reason I can think of.

I often remember my dreams. But when I am pregnant my subconscious goes absolutely berserk while I'm asleep. It's happened three times before, when I was pregnant with my other kids.

I'm sometimes woken up by a particularly exciting, or terrifying, or too-sad dream with my heart racing in the quiet of the night.

These dreams are so vivid I really think I am living them. I can feel textures, smell and taste things, hear voices, and even have memories in them.

I have to tell myself a few times that it was just a dream. That this darkened room, with light from the streetlight seeping in the edges around the blinds, and my husband sleeping beside me, is the real reality.

Then in the morning I can feel tired, as though I have been living in these parallel universes during the night and not actually got much rest.

Sometimes I have an emotional hangover - because of the intensity of the emotions and sensations in the dream, or the mental conundrums that the dream story presented.

Sometimes I'm hugely entertained by a dream and I can't believe it came from me, and I'm grateful for being given a funny story to tell my husband and friends.

I don't dream about the baby much. I guess most of this dreaming is baby-related though, as this article on pregnancy info.net proposes.

Maybe I'm getting less deep sleep because the baby's movements are quite strong now and they're disturbing my sleep patterns. Who knows. I'm just waiting for my next deep, dreamless sleep.

I'm only five months pregnant and I'm already obsessing about not getting enough sleep. Hah!

Image by tibchris