Pregnancy dreams and what they symbolize for your life

Many people come to me with this question: “I dreamed I was pregnant, what does it  mean?”  While I can never immediately answer what it means specifically, I can say a few things about the possible meaning of pregnancy dreams.

In the most basic terms, pregnancy dreams can mean that it’s time for you to re-imagine your life and trust in your potential.

In a sense pregnancy dreams mean that you are pregnant with possibility for your future, but in order to realize that possibility, you must take care in moving forward.  These dreams are often precursors to dreams about babies.  The dream reveals that something in you is in a state of gestation, but the  question is, “what is it?” It could be something concrete, such as a business venture or some other creative project.  A pregnancy dream could also refer to a transformation of your psychological attitude.  And finally, a dream about being pregnant could be a signal of imminent spiritual awakening.

If you haven’t already read the introductory posts on Dream Interpretation and Deciphering Dream Meaning, you may find them to be a helpful start.  Be sure that you have an understanding of dream symbolism.  If you are already familiar with Jungian dream interpretation, then keep reading.

Pregnancy Dreams: letting nature its course

Pregnancy dreams signal that something is in incubation.  What is it?  You may or may not know the answer immediately, but you can trust the dream image – especially if it comes after a time of creative, psychological, or emotional barrenness, so to speak.  The dream image says, “Something is in the works.”  Now, you should pay attention for clues about what that something is. For example, what have you been thinking about lately?  Has something caught your attention? What does your heart want?

We are going to explore pregnancy dreams from a few different perspectives. When the dream speaks on a concrete or objective level, it often refers to projects you have in mind. On the psychological level, we look for opportunities for a change in your habitual attitude about life.

The third perspective on pregnancy dreams is spiritual. By spiritual, I do not mean anything religious. I am referring to an inner realization about the deeper meaning of life.  This way of looking at the dream goes well beyond personal development or anything concrete. We are talking about real transformation, something which can transform your entire personality altogether.

Pregnancy dream meaning: possible future achievement and personal development

At the level of personal achievement and development, a pregnancy dream signifies that something new in your life is beginning to take shape.

Whatever it is, it is at an early stage of the process.  As I said before, the dream could be referring to a creative or business project. If so, what are you working on or thinking about right now that’s still in a nascent state?

Pregnancy dreams can mean that you are moving in the right direction. If there is other scenery, people, or images in the dream, look at each one carefully and then make your associations to each image and amplify them in order to get to the archetypal meaning of the symbols.  Watch for images in the dream that support the context of your idea or project.  Be very honest with yourself here. Don’t do any free association because this allows your ego’s desire take over. If you are uncertain, then wait for follow-up dreams, and until then, trust this positive dream image.

Confirmation after pregnancy dreams

If you do see confirmation, then my advice would be to continue moving forward in the direction of your current project.  If you don’t see affirmation, you can still move forward, but do it slowly. Watch for either a confirmation or an objection signal from the unconscious.  Reproachful or other objection dreams make it clear that we are headed down the wrong path.

Confirmation dreams let us know we are moving in the right direction.

For example, for my diploma thesis, I considered writing something about Alchemy. I had a deep interest in it, but I was not entirely comfortable undertaking it as a big writing project. I was having serious doubts about my capability because I couldn’t read Latin. Still, I continued to read translations and my interest piqued more and more. For some reason, I felt like I got it, but even so, I just couldn’t trust myself.  Self-doubt is something from which many of us suffer.  And this is part of my point with dreams.  They can guide and support you when you need it.

Pregnancy dreams as confirmation:  don’t let fear drag you down!

What I was running into here were longstanding regrets over my chosen educational path – regrets which made me seriously doubt myself.  My running narrative was, “I should have …,” a typical, but profoundly destructive attitude.

Self-doubt causes us to make decisions based in fear. That kind of unproductive fear prevents us from moving forward in life, a dynamic which constellates neuroses.  Neurotic fear keeps us down and only reassures our self-doubt.

So, I slowly continued with my dabbling in Alchemy. About 3 months later, I dreamed that I was pregnant. I knew it could possibly be pointing to my studies, but I got no real signs of that. The dream only said I was pregnant.

I started to delve deeper into the work and finally shared my ideas with two trusted mentors. A few weeks later, I had a dream where C.G Jung and I were working on deciphering an old Alchemical text.  In the dream, I had a revelation about a symbol and shared it with Jung.  He said to me, “That’s it!  You’ve got it.”  This is an example of a confirmation dream.  You can see more examples of confirmation dreams in the post on Deciphering Dream Meaning.

Now, it’s wonderful that dreams will let you know to keep moving toward a goal. But I am always more intrigued by the deeply personal message of dreams. This dream spoke directly to my fear about not knowing Latin.  It reinforced that my symbolic understanding was valid.

Pregnancy dreams:   the emergence of new ideas

If nothing concrete comes to mind for you, that’s no problem. A pregnancy dream is still a very positive dream image.

Pregnancy dreams do not have to refer to anything that you already have in mind.  This dream image could also represent a future “coming to mind” of something.

Here’s what I mean. Have you ever had the feeling that something is in the air? The “winds of change are in the air” is a saying that describes this kind of feeling.  Many people can easily miss this sort of vague feeling, but you can learn to sense it.

This kind of feeling is an intuitive sense that something is on the horizon. You can trust this feeling. Intuition is what Jung called an irrational function of consciousness and in his lexicon intuition   an ability to sense possibility.  Don’t be confused by use of the word irrational because in Jung’s analytical psychology an irrational function has a profound value.  And by the way, the problem with intuitive types is a tendency to dwell in too much possibility!  When you do this, nothing is ever born.  So, be careful if this sounds like you.

Suppose you have felt an underlying urge to do something different in your life. Maybe you don’t know exactly what it is yet, but you get the feeling that you are ready for change. The dream would then be a reference to an undercurrent of something that is about to come into consciousness.

Consciousness is so much more than many think it is.   For example, consciousness is not simply a brain state.  This may sound strange at first, but try to think about the nature of consciousness as a self-existing field of awareness – field of infinite possibility.

Consciousness as a Field of Awareness

The field of consciousness has a threshold.  The threshold is the space between what is conscious and what is unconscious. When something crosses the threshold of consciousness, we become aware of it.

Thoughts, feelings, and emotions drift in and out of consciousness, but they do not disappear into nothingness.  They just drop below the threshold of consciousness into the unconscious. For example,  you know your friend’s phone number or birthday, but you aren’t always thinking about it. When you need it, you focus your attention on it and it comes right back into the field your awareness.

Now let’s consider where new thoughts and ideas come from. Think about a time when you were at a loss for a solution to a problem. No matter how much you tried to come up with something, you came up with nothing. What usually happens is that suddenly, when you are not so focused on the problem, you have a brilliant insight, and you can see your answer in full.

From where do such insights emerge?

What is really going on is that this whole solution had been gestating in the depths of your unconscious. Like child in the womb, it’s been weaving itself together down there long before you even knew you were going to get the information.

If you have had a pregnancy dream, then now that you know something is on the verge of emerging, you can write down everything that comes to mind or draws your attention to it. Keep a vision board or a journal. Watch for synchronicities in your life.

Pregnancy dreams:  the birth of new perspective

A pregnancy dream could also refer to the emergence of an entirely new dimension of your personality.

Dreams like this often come after a long depression or devastating loss. Again, such a dream is a good indication that something in you is ready to be born or re-born. Take it as a good sign.

For example, I had been working with a woman for about three years. And though she appeared confident and was intelligent, deep, and wise beyond her years, she was having a really difficult time stepping out into the world. She did not believe in herself. Her chief complaints were feelings of worthlessness and extreme self-doubt.

Using her dreams as source material for getting to the bottom of her issues, we worked on one issue at a time. Her dreams were filled with unresolved inner and outer conflict.  But suddenly, something shifted. The flavor of her dreams changed. There was less and less conflict and battle. She started feeling better. She did not even know why. There was no concrete reason, it was just the way she felt. Then she had the pregnancy dream.

A new life was forming in her, but it was clearly not an actual child. We both knew something was happening, even though there was nothing concrete in her life yet. She had been doing dream work long enough to know that she could trust this image. She was able to let go of fear and worry about figuring out what she was going to do with her life, and instead, watched for the next sign.

Eventually, something did happen. She remembered a long-brewing creative project and began working on it. Once she did this, all of the areas in her life that troubled her began to fall into place. She got a new job and things just started picking up for her. Within two years, her life was completely transformed.  She was a new woman. The key here was that she stopped focusing on her fears and instead remained open to the possibility of something new coming into her life.

So, the question for you as the dreamer is, “what does the pregnancy dream mean for me right now?”  You need to reflect deeply on that.  What is happening in your life right now? What are the circumstances around your dream imagery? Can you get any clues?  If not, stay open to new possibility. Don’t be restricted by your limited imagination. Life will offer you far more than you could ever imagine. You just have to be open to it.

Pregnancy dream meaning:  a spiritual awakening

This is the pregnancy dream of a 39-year-old woman who was unknowingly in the midst of intense spiritual awakening. It’s really a combination of a wedding and a pregnancy dream. We’ll cover wedding dreams in a separate post. For now just keep in mind that this is an inner union.

Spiritual awakenings are not always filled with angels, light, and feelings of bliss.  They often arise from the depths of our darkest moments. This woman had suffered years of depression and anxiety, coupled with intense visionary experiences. This dream is an image of the real mystery of transformation associated with the mythological ideas of the virgin birth and the mystical marriage.  But this is not transformation in the psychological sense that we spoke about earlier. This is a transformation of the human spirit. This dream is a perfect example to show you how you can amplify this imagery by looking at its archetypal nature.

Our clues into the spiritual nature of the dream are the images of the church, the color white in combination with her pregnancy, the mysterious wedding, and the strange glow. When you have a pregnancy dream that takes on this kind of numinosity, you know that you are in the archetypal realm of the human spirit.  In other words, you are moving outside of the field of time and personal achievement and into the eternal dimension of the soul.

Dream Interpretation: amplification of the symbols

First let’s look at the color white. White has associations with death and the crossing of the threshold between the seen and the unseen world.  For instance, many people who have had near-death experiences report seeing a white light. Related to the idea of death is its association of the white color worn in initiatory rituals. An initiatory ritual is a symbolic death and rebirth. The color white is also related to the stage of the albedo in alchemy. This stage occurs after everything dark has been experienced and purged.

Keep in mind the woman who had the dream. She had suffered the darkness, hopelessness, and despair. She lived through it and came out of it intact. At that point in her life, she was searching for its meaning. When you can find meaning in the darkness of your experiences, it has a purifying effect.

The imagery of the white wedding in association with the pregnancy is connected to the archetype of the Virgin Birth, which is the same as the Immaculate Conception. Now, this idea has been passed down from the Christian tradition as a miraculous, historical fact that happened only once. In truth, you find it in many traditions and stories, some of which were around long before the Christian version of it. It’s not a reference to a historical metaphysical fact. The Virgin Birth is a reference to the awakening of the spiritual life of the human being.  That makes the kind of dream imagery above an archetypal dream.

In the dream, this wedding takes place in a “church of some kind”. This dream reference points you immediately away from the traditional image of a church. This is a reference to an inner Church. It’s a spiritual place within the soul of every human being.

Pregnancy dream meaning: the birth of the human spirit

The awakening of the human spirit is what separates a person from those who live simply according to the material facts of biological, material, and social life.

The common thread in the Virgin Birth theme is that it depicts the birth of a god or demi-god.

In some traditions this experience is called enlightenment. We can also bring the images of white and the glow into association with enlightenment. What we need to realize is that the god being born is really ourselves. All that means is that we realize the eternal dimension within ourselves.  Ultimately, all dream symbols emerge from this dimension. Each one is like a bridge that connects you to something within you that is far deeper, greater, and wiser than the limited ego.

If you can find your connection to this dimension, you are anchored in a center that will stabilize you through anything life throws your way. Your fears, worries, and concerns are still there, but they no longer feel so life threatening. In fact, you can even begin to find a deeper meaning to them. You start to see your troubles in life as part of your spiritual evolution.