What does it mean when a man dreams that he is pregnant?

Today, let’s talk about pregnancy dreams in men.  There must be something in the air amongst you men!  Lately, I have had several men ask me, “What does it mean when a man dreams he’s pregnant?”

<—  Yeah, that’s pretty much the look on their faces when they ask me because when a man dreams he’s pregnant, it can make him feel weird.

Don’t worry guys. Pregnancy dreams in men are actually pregnant with psychological meaning. They are expressing something very positive about your potential.

And as I told those brave men who’ve admitted that they had such a dream, it’s is not a strange dream at all.

Pregnancy dreams in men are only strange when you look at them literally.  Men do have pregnancy dreams and that is just a fact of dream life.

As with all of our dreams, when a man dreams he’s pregnant it is symbolic.  As I just said, the dream is making a statement about the man’s psychic state, and in particular, it is a statement about his potential to conceive something and bring it into life.

Later in the post, I will differentiate between a man who dreams of a woman being pregnant and a man who dreams that he himself is pregnant, but first the good stuff – the man who dreams he’s pregnant.

Pregnancy Dreams in Men: the general meaning

In the first place, the dream symbolizes everything that any pregnancy dream would symbolize.  Here’s the gist of what I already covered in the post on pregnancy dreams:

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

In a sense pregnancy dreams mean that you are pregnant with possibility for your future. These dreams are often precursors to dreams about babies.

The dream reveals that something in you is in a state of gestation. The question is, “what is it?”

• It could be something concrete, such as a business venture or a creative project.
• A pregnancy dream could also refer to a change of your psychological attitude.
• And finally, a dream about being pregnant could be a sign of imminent spiritual awakening.

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 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 some passion caught your attention? 

What does your heart want to do?

So guys, when you are reflecting on these questions, especially those last two, I am not talking about an object of your affection, i.e., a lover.  If perchance you do find yourself strangely attracted to someone, then try to see even that symbolically.

Strange attractions are projections, which means the unconscious transfer of our subjective contents onto someone or something else.  Whenever you feel an uncanny attraction to someone, try to see what this person symbolizes for you.

Pregnancy Dreams in Men: Dream Example and Interpretation

Here’s a simple example of a man who dreamed he was pregnant:

I dreamed that I was pregnant and I was very excited about it.

In addition to the fact of the dream – the man is pregnant – we have a very important emotional factor to work with:  his excitement about the pregnancy.  This emotional excitement is a statement about his current psychic atmosphere, from the point of view of the unconscious.

Any time you feel emotional in a dream, start your dream interpretation with that emotion.  It gives you something to work with.  Follow that by determining the type of dream it is, as I talked about in the intro post on Deciphering Dream Meaning.

As I told the dreamer, he himself may or may not be aware of this excitement.  This may sound strange at first – the idea that you might not be aware of your own excitement.  But the psychological fact is that we often go through life on autopilot, acting out of habit and missing out on the all of the nuance that life offers.

And because of this, sometimes our dream self feels something that our conscious self does not yet feel.  If you continue reading posts on this site, you’ll start to get the idea of what means.  As Jung said time and time again, the unconscious registers everything. The conscious mind registers very little in comparison.

Dreams give you the point of view of the unconscious. Remember, with your dream interpretation, you are building a bridge between the unconscious and consciousness.  You are adding something new to your current perspective.

You can read more about what that means here.

Pregnancy Dreams in Men:  Working with the Emotion of the Dream

If you are a man who’s had a pregnancy dream and you too felt this kind of excitement, then you need to tap into the energy of that excitement, for the emotional factor in the dream is the transformative element.

How does it feel to be pregnant?  Here, we’re not talking here about the idea of the baby, but rather only the pure sensation and feeling of the excitement.  There should be a feeling tone to it.

Once you can describe that feeling of excitement, then you see if you experience this same feeling somewhere in your life.  If it’s not there yet, watch for it …

When you feel that same sense of excitement about some possibility for yourself, you know to pay attention.  This is what I love about dream work.  It forces you to become conscious of yourself and to pay attention to your life.

Pregnancy Dreams in Men:  Considerations

As I have already said, this possibility does not have to be concrete.

• new potential, however in an early nascent state
  • a project or emerging idea
• you are pregnant with possibility for your future
• something in you is in a state of gestation
  • this can be a psychological shift
  • a new venture
  • spiritual awakening

Don’t let the lack of concreteness diminish the value of this dream’s message. Every extraordinary accomplishment starts with an idea.  And MANY an extraordinary idea began with nothing more than a shift in mindstate – that gut feeling that something is coming.

When a man dream’s he’s pregnant, the dream says: something is coming.

Carrying that something to full term is up to you.

Pregnancy Dreams in Men:  What’s in your future?

Any dream symbolizes an underlying (unconscious) psychic process. An underlying unconscious process is all of that stuff that stirs beneath the surface of consciousness.

We can sense these undercurrents as unexplained emotions or moods, as an intuitive sense that something is about to shift in our lives, or as a feeling longing for change. If you are a man who has had a dream about being pregnant and have experienced the manifestations of this psychic undercurrent, then your pregnancy dream is likely speaking to that.

That a man has such a dream also says that he himself is capable of carrying this potential on his own – as a man. That is, he’s not dreaming about a pregnant woman, in which case his inner feminine carries the potential for him. In this dream the masculine side himself is capable of nurturing something – of bringing something into his life.

This says a lot about the depth and dimension of this man’s personality. He is capable of relatedness at a very deep level.

Pregnancy dreams are often the precursors to dreams about babies, which would take this potential into a new stage of development.

I always advise people to go back the number of months you are pregnant in the dream and see if there was some idea or sense of longing floating around.

Pregnancy Dreams in Men:  Dreams of carrying a baby girl

Now, what about a man who dreams he’s pregnant with a baby girl?  In this case, the dreamer knows this child is a girl, so the next symbol to explore is what do females, and in particular, what do “prenatal baby girls”, symbolize in men’s dreams?

In general, when men dream of females, they get a glimpse their inner feminine.  A man’s inner feminine is the contrasexual – and most often unconscious – dimension of his personality.  A man’s inner feminine is what C.G. Jung called the anima, who often makes her appearance in men’s dreams in the form of a child.

Pregnancy Dreams in Men:  The Inner Feminine of Men

I have said before that many of the concepts I talk about on the site, in this case the idea of a man’s inner feminine, can sound somewhat abstract. Keep in mind that I am speaking about “gender energy” and not in terms of men and women per se.  This is a way to describe the different ways that psychic energy  manifests itself in dreams and visions.

In a man, the anima represents the feminine components of his personality. She is essentially an embodiment of the traits which are typically feminine in nature: receptivity versus activity, intuition versus rationality, emotion and feeling versus logic and reason.  In addition, the instinctual woman tends to be conditioned by the principle of union and relationship versus separation and discrimination.

She is behind all of this gut feelings, productive hunches, and unusual insights.

We could also say that the anima represents all of the aspects of the man’s unredeemed or undeveloped self. By unredeemed or undeveloped I mean, the anima is everything which he has left behind during the development of his masculinity. (To be sure, some men can be unconsciously over-identified with the feminine, and thus, need to develop their masculinity.)

I said earlier that I wanted to distinguish between a man who dreams a woman is pregnant and a man who dreams he’s pregnant with the child. If a man dreams that a woman is pregnant, it more like shows that his inner feminine carries this emerging element of his personality.  But when a man dreams he’s pregnant, I see this as a potentially more developed man.

I have two ideas about the man who has such a dream:

1.   He is so unrelated to his inner feminine that the unconscious produces a shocking image that tells him, “You too have this inner feminine in you!” 

Perhaps the proverbial “man’s man” would have this dream – if he’s lucky.

2.  The man is already deeply related to his inner feminine, and therefore, he has the capacity to carry this unborn child for himself.

In this case, I would venture that some new aspect of his inner feminine is symbolized by this unborn child.  So, he’d have to explore what I have said about the inner feminine and see if he can discover what that might be.

As always, my advice is to watch for the development of the feminine in dreams.

Pregnancy Dreams in Men:  Dream Interpretation

Let’s take the case of the man who dreams he’s pregnant with the girl child.  The first questions we would explore would be the following:

• What is your relationship to women in general?
• How are you related to your inner feminine?
• How did you feel about this pregnancy?
  • As I said earlier, the emotional element of a dream is key.  If you have an emotional response to it, then tap into that feeling.
  • See if you are feeling this way about anything in your waking life
  • Is something new stirring in you?
  • If you were repulsed, then that’s a sign that you are rejecting something about yourself.

A man’s inner feminine is not figment of his imagination or a thought-construct. She is a self-existing reality – a living dimension in a man’s inner world, and when she stirs, men can feel it.

The stirring of a man’s inner feminine can be experienced as an unexplained emotional disturbance, an inspiration to do something with his life, a nascent passion for a new direction in life, or maybe even an intuitive solution to a problem.

In terms of the inspiration – the proverbial femme inspiratrice, so to speak – this prenatal child could be felt as a vague urge or longing to do something in one’s life. Maybe a man feels a looming sense of adventure looming, or perhaps a vague discontent.

The overall feeling is an urge for some kind of change in life, whether it is in the form of creative expression or the need for adventure. The image of this pregnancy could symbolize that.

So if a man is feeling those underlying stirrings to action, he would need to wait. Let it gestate so to speak until some sign manifests that points him in a particular direction.

Whatever is happening in this man is very delicate. It should be nurtured if he wants to bring it into life.