The symbolic meaning of seeing someone pregnant in a dream

What does it mean if you keep seeing someone pregnant in a dream, as in seeing someone else pregnant?  Symbolically speaking, pregnancy means something is developing.  Psychologically speaking, that something is in a state of potential.

Think of seeing someone pregnant in a dream as a symbolic pregnancy in your unconscious.  It’s a pregnancy in a part of yourself of which you are not necessarily aware.

Some of you may be looking like that thinking face emoji – 🤔🤔🤔 – wondering what the heck that means: a pregnancy in a part of yourself of which you are not necessarily aware.

I chose the first image because I think it’s helpful for describing what I mean.  Think of it as an image for the psyche.  Let’s say the conscious ego is the sun in the image.  The sun is often a symbol for the principle of Consciousness, but here I mean ego-consciousness.  Everything in the white part of the image is what you know already.

The pregnant woman is encapsulated in darkness, meaning she is in the unconscious part of your psyche.  Consider her as that unknown part of yourself. She could be a shadow for a woman or an anima for a man.  That woman is that part of yourself who is carrying a potential of which you aren’t aware.

Let’s say you have an artistic talent, but you don’t know it yet.  The artistic potential is encapsulated in that woman, that is to say, an unknown talent is encapsulated in a part of yourself which you don’t know.

You must make contact with her and integrate whatever she is in order to give birth to that talent.

Reading Suggestion

Marie Louise von Franz was the absolute best at describing how the unconscious encapsulates parts of itself.  You can read more about that in her book Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche, especially in the essay “The Black Woman’s Castle.”  Don’t expect it to be easy reading!  Take your time with that material – like you would an exquisite meal.

I will say more about Jung’s understanding of the structure of the psyche below.  If you are interested in attending Zoom seminars on Jung’s Collected Works or in participating in Jungian Dream Groups via Zoom, the please reach out and get on the mailing list to be notified when they start.

Pregnancy Dreams in General – A Review

• Pregnancy dreams are typically encouraging signs that something in your life is in a state of incubation. What that something is depends on what is happening in your life at the moment.
• In a sense, the dream says that a part of you is pregnant with future possibility. In the case of dreaming someone else is pregnant, you’re going to have to realize that part of yourself who is pregnant because she is the one who holds the new life.
• This “new life” could be anything: a major life change, a creative project, an attitude shift, or even a spiritual awakening.

I don’t mean for this to sound like some kind of new age prediction. These symbolic associations with pregnancy dreams come from comparative religion and mythological material.

Whenever you dream of yourself being pregnant, then whatever is developing is already close to consciousness, meaning that you might already have an idea of what you’re carrying.  If not, then you could become aware of it if you reflect on the past few months of your life.  Ask yourself, what has been gestating in me?

Let’s look at a quote from the pregnancy dreams post:

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.

A Little More on the Symbolism of Pregnancy

Our dream images, like mythological images, show the direction in which our life energy wants to flow. These images give us a point of reference outside of our ego’s limited perspective.  The key to letting these images change us is to align our consciousness with that flow. Aligning ourselves with this flow sometimes requires that we put our “will” in check.

Pay attention to the flow of life, not to the petty demands of the ego.

Think of what the birth of a child means in any religion. It is symbolic birth, the archetypal process of the Virgin Birth or Rebirth.  The child means a new life or new order of things.  In essence, the child symbolically replaces the old order.

Psychologically speaking, you have to translate the mythological dream image into your conscious life. A new life or perspective must replace some old way of life or thinking.

Seeing someone pregnant in a dream recap

When you dream of seeing someone else pregnant, then the potential is further away from your conscious realization, as I have described above.  Again, that means an unconscious part of yourself actually contains this potential.

Hopefully, you have read the post on what it means to dream about someone.  Assuming that you’ve already read enough from this site, then we know the dream is ultimately about you and not someone else.  That general rule applies even if the pregnant person in your dream is someone you actually know.  So, again think of seeing someone pregnant in a dream as a symbolic pregnancy in your unconscious.  It’s a part of yourself of which you are not necessarily aware.

… everyone in your dream symbolizes some part of yourself, for example, a shadow, anima, or animus. By reflecting on the image and personality of the pregnant person, your dream can help you become more aware of that unknown part of yourself.   You want to get to know that part of yourself because she (or he!) carries something that your conscious mind cannot – at least not until you have integrated that dream image.

Seeing Someone Pregnant in a Dream:  Who or what is the other person in you?

As Jung said, whenever you dream about someone you are actually dreaming about unknown, untapped, or unrealized aspects of yourself. This means that every person in your dream – in some way, shape, or form – is an unconscious aspect of your own personality.

You’d have to reflect on this pregnant person and her personality traits.  What psychological value does she represent in you?  It will be something which you don’t recognize, or perhaps, something you deny in yourself.  In analysis with others, it is far more difficult for people to see their gold than it is to see their shit.  Maybe it sounds odd, but it actually takes more courage to realize and live your magnificence than it does to accept your shit.

Relationships as Mirrors

In almost every relationship, we experience something of ourselves.  When the relationship is unconscious, then it is typically contaminated by projections.  In essence, we usually see in another what we cannot see in ourselves.

When you reflect on this pregnant woman, you have to think about and feel through everything you imagine her to be.

1. If you know her, then how is she when you are around her?
2. How do you imagine her to be when you are not around her?
3. What images or thoughts arise about her?

Many times our immediate impression of people is intermingled with our unconscious projections.  Projection is the unconscious transfer of our own qualities onto another person.  Projection is behind that instant spark we sometimes feel when we meet another person.

Projections and Seeing Someone Pregnant in Your Dreams

What we are getting at here is withdrawing your projections from this woman and integrating those projected psychological values into your conscious awareness.

Psychological value here does not mean “something you consider worthy” or anything like that.  Psychological value means “something which contains energy available for work”.

• Note: Anything about yourself, of which you unconscious, holds a piece of your vitality.  You can’t access it.  It doesn’t matter whether that is a quality you love or one that you despise.  One keeps you from seeing your gold and the other makes you act out unconsciously.

Carl Jung’s Structure of the Psyche

In order to better understand what seeing someone pregnant in a dream means, we have to look at a few ideas from Carl Jung.

One is the symbolic image of pregnancy and another – and probably more important factor – is the structure of the human psyche.  If you can understand the latter, then you will have a better idea of a symbolic pregnancy in an unconscious part of your psyche.

The image to the right is the closest I could find to show how Jung saw the human psyche.  Remember, Jung delineated a structure to the human psyche, with the fundamental layers being consciousness and the unconscious.

In the unconscious dimension of our psyche, we have a personal unconscious and the collective unconscious.  Those two dimensions interact not only with each other, but also with the conscious ego.

The blue splotches in the picture represent the images we see in our dreams.  We don’t know immediately what any dream image actually means, even when we can say, “that is shadow” or “that is an anima or animus figure.”  Just saying any of that means nothing.

Getting to the meaning of our dream figures

In order to understand the meaning of anima or shadow, we have to work out what those images mean for our conscious lives.  How do they affect our lives in real time?

Our dream figures can represent the ways we unconsciously act or think or the moods that can overpower us.  It’s not so easy to understand this unless you can catch it in the moment.  For example, one of my male clients became very upset with me and then wrote me a huffy email – or better yet, his anima mood wrote me that email.

In that moment I could say to him, “This email was from your anima, not  you.  This comes from a woman’s perspective, not yours.”  That clicked for him because he could identify that mood he was in when he wrote them email.

Pregnancy Dreams and Your Creative Impulse

Pregnancy dreams could also be about an unrealized creative impulse, which means that some creative potential in you could be brought to life.

By unrealized, I mean two things:  it is a creative impulse that has not yet been concretized or a creative impulse in you of which you are altogether unware.

Your creative impulse is like an early-stage embryo the womb.  It’s only a possibility.  Until you bring it into the world, you can’t do anything with it.  What you have to understand is that something is always churning in our depths, making itself ready to emerge or push its way through the threshold of consciousness.  That is the image of the kind of birth I am talking about here.

Pregnancy in Dreams:  My answers from Quora

You can apply the following considerations to seeing someone pregnant in a dream.  These come from some of my answers to questions from Quora users regarding these dreams:

Integrating Pregnancy Dreams

Pregnancy dreams are especially significant if you are coming out of stage of barrenness or depression. Maybe you have lost hope or have experienced some kind of creative block. Then the dream would symbolize that things are changing, but only as long as you put your conscious attitude in accord with the flow of change.

For example, when a woman is pregnant, she must subject herself to that process because it’s working on its own. All the woman can do is take care of herself and nurture that process.

In relation to pregnancy dreams, I always ask my clients, “what have you been thinking about doing with your life? Do you have any possibilities before you?”

If there is an answer, then we watch for signs that they are going in the right direction.

If nothing concrete comes to mind for you, that’s no problem. A pregnancy dream is still a positive sign. 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. This kind of feeling is an intuitive sense that something is on the horizon. You can trust this feeling. Intuition in the Jungian lexicon means an ability to sense possibility. 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.

There are many ways to look at pregnancy dreams, only a few of which I can quote here:

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 in the dream, look at each image carefully and then amplify them. Watch for images in the dream that support the context of your idea. Be very honest with yourself here. Don’t let your ego’s desire take over. If you are uncertain, then wait for follow-up dreams.

I always take pregnancy dreams as a good sign, even if I dream of someone else being pregnant.