Parenting anxieties trigger bizarre dreams in 3 out of 4 moms, study shows

For some mothers the dreams are so intense, disturbing, and realistic that upon waking, it is necessary in order to relieve anxiety, to rush to the child's room to make sure the infant is safe.

Tore Nielsen, of the university of Montreal, and a researcher at the Dream and Nightmare Laboratory, who was intrigued by reports like this from his own wife, wondered whether other new mothers commonly experienced nightmares and movements during sleep. A quick poll of family members who’d recently given birth resulted in 9 out of 10 moms telling of strange sleep experiences.

He questioned 202 new mothers about their dream and sleep behaviors. For comparison, Nielsen also surveyed 50 pregnant women and 21 who’d never had a baby.

Almost 75% of women who’d recently given birth reported being plagued by terrifying nightmares involving their infants.

A similar percentage reported anxiety-ridden dreams. This is compared to 59% of pregnant women, and 42% of those who’d never had a child.

The pregnant women’s nightmares often involved miscarriages or still births, or accidents causing harm to their babies.

After the births, some of the new moms dreamed that they’d dropped the baby, or that their infant had died while in the care of a babysitter. Others dreamed that their babies had morphed and now had four eyes.

Dr. Sheldon Roth suspects that the dreams reflect the anxiety that new, inexperienced parents feel when their first child is born. For nine months, moms know exactly where their baby is.

People use dreams as a way of problem solving and adapting to new circumstances, Roth says. These parents are simply using their dreams to mentally sort out a huge life change.

For his part, Nielsen theorizes that the nightmares experienced by his wife and other new moms might be in some way related to how the brain builds attachments to a new baby. He doesn’t think that hormones have much to do with the nightmares because some new dads he’s talked to have experienced the same thing.

Many researchers now think that new memories — especially emotionally charged ones — are organized and stored during sleep, Nielsen says.

It's possible that during the first few weeks the mother and father are building mental representations of the child, and as the memory traces are being laid down, they’re not so stable, so you get dreams in which the baby is suddenly gone and the high anxiety levels, lack of sleep of new parents who worry they won’t do everything perfectly cause nightmares.

Nielsen's study followed women for just three months and many were still experiencing anxious dreams at the end of the study. He says he’d like to go back and check with the women to see just how long they lasted.