The Boy Baby

Your dream will often have a back story; don't be too quick to think you've pinned down its meaning. Most of the time you will need to lift more than one veil.

The Dream: My daughter has had a baby. She arrives at my house with her husband and hands me the baby, who has a crabby little face. Nevertheless, I gladly receive the child. After a few moments I realize I don't even know the baby's sex. I ask, and my daughter tells me it's a boy. I am slightly disappointed and say, “I'm not sure I know what to do with a boy.” All my experience has been with girls.

I seem to be in charge of the creature; he goes everywhere in my arms. If he cries, I wonder, will I hand him back to his mom as most people do with a baby? My daughter is glowing, very happy. She looks very thin, and I'm concerned. She tells me she weights 150 pounds: is that enough? “You don't look it,” I say.

Even though I'm  enjoying holding him, part of me is concerned that I'll get saddled with this child to raise. I wonder if my daughter will leave him with me and go along her merry way, unencumbered. I don't think I can take on children at this point. One quiet baby is one thing; a couple of active toddlers would be exhausting.

Interpretation: The day before I had this dream I had a visit from a friend cataloging a list of recent losses: one of her aunts had died as well as a very good friend. Being presented in waking life with her pain made me question my ability to nurture her. Part of me wanted to fob off the responsibility; someone else should be taking care of her. As long as the “baby” is quiet I can manage; if he becomes activated it's too much!

What's behind this unwillingness to comfort and console, to take care of a friend? My own “baby”that becomes activated in this situation is the underlying thing that frightens me. An incident that coincided with the visit from my friend was the more important dream trigger. We found three dead birds on our property, all victims of the neighbor's cats. Seeing the mangled birds brought back memories of seeing dead baby bird fetuses as a child. At the time it upset my child sensibility terribly, and the dream reminds me, once again, why it's difficult to deal with another's pain: it taps into my own reservoir.

The Women and Children

Dream image: Three women in empire dresses and turbans hold two babies.

Interpretation: All babies are our babies, the children of our common humanity. All women are sisters. In this dream the women of the world unite to nurture the children of the world. I hope this image is precognitive!

A Blond, A Baby, and a Joint

The Dream: A platinum blond woman has a new baby. I am wondering about her age: I would have thought she was as old as I—but the baby proves she's younger. I think her platinum blond hair is so close to gray in color that she might as well let it go gray. She is very petite and superficial, reminding me of someone who might work in real estate. She is very judgmental over superficial things. To show off how petite she is, she sits with her baby in a baby car seat.

Somewhere in all of this is an artist. I'm not sure whether it's her, a friend of mine (I think that's it) or me. But everything about the blond is done with style, so it seems she would appreciate this artist, whose work is hip and stylish.

I decide, in light of having this done-up creature around, that I'd better put on some eyebrows. My brothers think this would be interesting to watch, and they peer at me as I apply the eyebrow powder. I get the impression that Nick has smoked a marijuana joint. I'm surprised. Nick has always impressed me as very straight. Greg says, “You'd better watch it; you'll get Dad in trouble.” He's alluding to our father's security clearance.

Interpretation: Dreams can tell us many things, but one thing this dream is telling me is that I think I'm superficial. And I have this to say to my dream:

You say I'm superficial:
I won't deny it.
I'm not the diamond, but its sparkle.
I'm not the ocean, but its glinting.
I'm not the cave, but its hand prints.  

Play with me.

What Am I Giving Up?

The Dream: I have a baby. Another woman desperately wants one so I give it to her. I worry a little about what I've done, but when see how very tenderly the woman treats the infant I feel the child will be well cared for. Then another troublesome thought: The baby has been adopted. How will she bond with anyone after all these changes?

Interpretation: I feel that I should give away some part of myself that I treasure (the baby) to fulfill another's need. I trust the person to tenderly care for this part of me, yet I soon question whether I've neglected my responsibility by relinquishing it. This part has been adopted, implying that it is something I've consciously chosen. The unconscious warns that giving it away to another's care might hamper its development.

Free the Baby

The Dream: We're on a mission to rescue a baby. I get her to crawl to me from behind a chained apartment door. I take her and run, but the others in the rescue group are ambivalent. They want to rescue to girl, but they are also afraid of the hooligans on the other side. When I get outside to the car, I want to get in and flee, but the group stalls just long enough for an officious, sleazy-looking lawyer to threaten us. I persist in taking the child, and Clark tells me the lawyer has photographed us; so I know the hooligans will come after us and kill us if they can.

Interpretation: This baby resides with hooligans, so I can guess that she shares their traits. She is the small part of me that doesn't want to behave. I'm determined to save this spontaneous part of myself, and I have no respect for the lawyer, representing morally suspect rules and convention, who tries to intimidate me. He's officious and sleazy. There's freedom in this direction, even if I have to keep looking over my shoulder.

A Dangerous Illumination

The Dream: An old woman sits on a park bench with me; a younger woman sits behind us. An older child plays nearby; a baby lies in a pram with a hood the length of its carriage. The older woman speaks, sotto voce, about things the children shouldn't hear. The “nanny” behind us is alarmed that the children will hear. I look inside the tunnel created by the pram's hood and I see the baby: ugly, very ugly, its red face scrunched up in a yowl.

The older woman is murdered. The scene switches to a prequel. The older woman, the nanny, and I run into each other in a general store. They have a large stream of children with them, ranging in age from pram age to about 11. They are lined up in the order of their ages. I understand that this scene (of the dream) will help me determine who murdered the old woman.

Interpretation: This dream occurred on my mother's birthday, and the older woman in the dream allows me to reflect on her loss as I wonder: who killed her?

What is it we don't want our inner child to know, as we whisper sotto voce, if not the grim reality of our own inevitable death? Of course the baby howls—as loudly as he can—to drown out this realization. He becomes ugly from the effort. Is this what makes humans so ugly to each other? Would we behave the way we do—so grasping—if we accepted our limited time here? Death is the most basic “fact of life.” Of course it can't be discussed in front of the children who, by succeeding their parents, appear to have killed them, leaving the children with a guilt they can't acknowledge or eradicate. Or is the guilt from the unacknowledged joy of being free of them at last? Is that the murderer we can't discover?

The Rescued Baby

The Dream: I'm on an escalator, of the sort that is stacked one on top of the next like a stairwell in a very tall building. I am with my mother. The feeling of the place is something like a combination of a department store and the stairwell of the Brooklyn apartment my mother grew up in.

I am unaware that I have a baby until it jumps across the stair rail, heading for a steep and deadly fall, down so many stories that I can't see the bottom. I think my reaction time will be too slow to save her—but even as I have this thought I've reached out my hand and grabbed her by the legs, bringing her back to safety. She's about 7 inches tall, tiny and more like a doll than a baby. I'm very relieved to have saved her; I holler her name in relief and vexation.

Interpretation: My husband Clark and I have been listening to a philosophy course on “the meaning of life.” The course insists that “spontaneity” is essential to a meaningful life (probably because most philosophers so lack the quality). The dream deals with the age (7) at which my own spontaneity was curtailed by coming up against the requirements of my 2nd grade teacher that I sit down and—more important—shut up. Having lost my battle with the establishment I reformed and by the third grade had become a model student.

The little figure who is ready to jump to her doom (my spontaneous self) is rescued by the part of me who doesn’t think she has it in her (doubts her reaction time will be fast enough). The truly spontaneous part acts even before the thought is finished—so this dream might point to a positive development: that adult spontaneity—strong, purposefully doing the right thing—can rescue the child spontaneity that lacks judgment and foresight. Mother lurks in the background but plays no other role.

Expecting in the Autumn of My Life

The Dream: An older woman is surprised to find herself pregnant. She has not seen a doctor, but she is sure this is the case: she knows how it feels.

Interpretation: These last three dreams can be looked at as a sequence that tells me I've done enough for the waking life children I have launched into the world. Now it's time for me to have a new baby (a new passion in life).

Crossing My T's and Dotting My I's

The Dream: At a T junction a toddler breaks away from the group she's with and runs into the street. I am closest to the infant so I step into the street holding up my hand to stop the flow of cars. As I go after the baby I feel partially paralyzed: either because I'm concerned that I'll get hit by a car or because I can't move as fast as I think I should. In any case it's fast enough. I pick up the baby, who is safe, and return her to her parents who, I think, should have been watching over her more carefully.

Interpretation: As recent difficult life transitions visit my children in waking life I struggle with feelings of motherly inadequacy. Am I doing enough to save them? Are they okay on their own? The dream says I could have done more (moved faster to avert a looming problem) but it also says I've done enough. The baby is safe.

Diminution of the Mother

I had this dream after my older child moved to her own apartment.
The Dream: My mother is getting breast augmentation surgery. My son and I clutch hands for comfort in our anxiety over mother's operation. I begin to wonder if he is too old (he's about 9) to hold hands with his mother, and I wonder if he will pull away in embarrassment.

Next we are inside the medical facility where we see mother's picture on a video screen. She has turned into a baby and is dressed in a very feminine outfit with a bonnet. Her face, however, is still mother's. She looks cranky. “I don't think mother is going to like this,” I say.

Interpretation: As much as we are happy to see our children achieve and go out on their own, it represents a loss. As I lose the mother role to my child's independence, my mother (me as a mother) wants to have her mother role (breasts) enlarged. I ponder accepting the child's need for independence as I wonder if my dream son will be embarrassed to be holding hands with his mother. By the end of the dream, mother has been reduced to a cranky baby. I apparently haven't accepted my child's new life with good grace quite yet.

Two Toilets

The Dream: I have to use the toilet. The first one I find is the height of a baby's highchair. The lid is down, covered with debris from an infant's diaper change. I remove the pieces of trash with distaste and find it's not as disgusting as I had anticipated. I keep expecting to come across a poop-filled diaper but never do.

I abandon this toilet and find myself next to another one, a typical adult model this time, with debris in the bowl. The discards are pharmacy boxes and other bathroom detritus. A box labeled with the drug name Napoxne catches my eye. What does it treat, I wonder? I awaken, saying the name over and over to myself, trying to remember it so I can do a google search in the morning.

Interpretation: I'm looking for some sort of release; there's something I need to let go of. (I need to use the toilet.) The appearance of the baby's highchair tells me that the first thing I must get out of my system dates to my early childhood. That the lid is down tells me that whatever lurks there is unconscious. Although it never reaches the level of consciousness, I symbolically deal with this mental trash by removing and accepting it (it's not as disgusting as I had anticipated). I haven't yet discovered the really shitty event—or possibly there isn't one. (I keep expecting to come across a poop-filled diaper but never do.)

In any case, I'm now ready to take on adult crap and again find the instrument of my release (the toilet) blocked. What's clogging it this time? The dream offers up the drug napoxne. When I searched for the meaning of the term I found a similar word, naproxen, that is a drug used to treat pain. The dream is telling me that my desire to avoid pain is blocking my ability to purge myself of it.

Yet Another Brown Baby

What does it mean when famous people appear in our dreams? To figure this out we need to take a look at which aspects of ourselves they represent.

The Dream: Obama is having an affair, and a brown baby is the result. I go to see the baby with some trepidation. I am a relative, perhaps the grandmother. Obama’s paramour has short curly brown hair and a soft and acquiescent feminine affect. She is a woman who stays in the background; she lacks assertiveness. She’s a shadowy, if central, player.

I am disappointed in Obama for being unfaithful to Michelle, but he says he “needs a rest.” I can see his current lover would be just that, and that Michelle’s relentlessly high standards could be hard to live with. I begin to understand, and accept, his behavior, but I think the baby will nevertheless be an embarrassment.

Then I meet the baby and am completely charmed. He is a beautiful shade of brown with an egg-shaped, slightly conical head. He wears red glasses and—just like the baby in the last dream—is preternaturally smart. I am very drawn to him and want to hold him.

Interpretation: In the dream Obama represents my ego, the central organizing force of my personality. His paramour is my shadow feminine side (She’s a shadowy, if central, player). I need a rest from the demanding part of my personality (Michelle); this is the part that drives me to work too hard and never seems satisfied with my accomplishments. My weaker, intuitive side (the shadow feminine) has produced something that feels illegitimate (the baby born out of wedlock). This makes me uneasy, and there’s a strong hint that what makes me uneasy is my fear of social opprobrium. But the reality of the baby changes everything; this new life that is being born in my psyche is something important and elemental (brown like the earth). This is something to embrace.

So Ugly She’s Cute

The Dream: My college friend Mary has a baby who’s so ugly that she’s cute. She is brown with straight golden-brown hair cut in long bangs, and she wears glasses. The baby is very young, only a few months old. She nurses with delight at Mary’s large breast. It soon becomes clear that the baby is very precocious. She can sit and talk; we can tell she is extremely intelligent. Mary is thrilled with her baby.

Interpretation: I think the newly arrived brown babies (this is the second one recently) are linked to a more authentic artistic self emerging as I work on my illustrated dream journals. Not all will find these drawings “beautiful,” yet I find them immensely appealing: so ugly they are beautiful. In waking life Mary is someone who has expressed her own artistic proclivities through others: she married a writer and has many friends in the arts. In the dream the Mary part of me—not quite brave enough to be an artist—has given birth to someone who might manage it. Mary nourishes the baby and is thrilled with her arrival: both good signs.

The Beautiful Dark Baby

The Dream: A good friend from my college days has a very young daughter, about 3 years old, with dark skin. I look at her husband to see if he is the source of the girl’s complexion, but he is as fair as his wife. The girl is adorable; her coloring is inexplicable. Was she adopted?

Interpretation: Something that has its roots in my past (college days) has recently (within the past three years) come to fruition. While it isn’t what I expected, and I’m not entirely sure where it came from, it is beautiful. Clearly I must adopt (accept) it.

Guest Dreamer: My New Life

Today’s guest dream leads the dreamer toward a glowing transformation. 

The Dream: I dreamed I was present at the birth of another woman's baby.  It was very large for a newborn, plump and mature looking.  The baby was big enough to weigh about 20 pounds but it was not at all heavy to hold. I held the baby close to my breast immediately; it wanted to nurse but of course I couldn't comply.  I covered both of us up with a sheer yellow fabric.  The baby sat quietly in my lap and we both looked toward the light that surrounded us. It didn't matter that we could not see beyond the fabric. Inside our glowing yellow light-weight tent, we were safe and warm without distractions.  We were both pacified.  

Carla’s interpretation: In my version of your dream, I am experiencing the emergence of a new sense of who I am and what I do. That I refer to the baby as an “it” rather than a “her” or “him” tells me that the baby represents an abstract quality: some important aspect of myself is being born. This new me is not yet integrated into the self I know, so I see the person who is giving birth as another woman. My creativity is channeled through this newly emerging self (the woman's new baby). The baby looks good to me (good-sized, plump, and mature looking) and I want to nourish it. Although I take it to heart (my breast), I am not quite ready to feed this new self. I need to acknowledge that its mother and I are one and the same. I find a safe and beautiful place, the color of life and enlightenment (yellow, sunlight) for me and the new baby to be together while I wait until I can recognize that what seems like someone else (the mother of my most precious creative force) is me.

Two Faces

Today’s guest dreamer, Symbolfinder, has worked to understand her dream, and she sent me her insightful analysis along with it. Before I read her interpretation I wrote my own reactions, so you’ll have the benefit of two slightly different slants on the dream’s meaning. The dreamer always gets the last word since she is the only one who knows what the dream's associations mean for her.

The Dream: A co-worker crosses through a doorway. He is carrying a baby that looks like him. The baby has a normal formed face, but on the back of its head is a second face. This second face is not perfectly formed yet - it is crude and incomplete. I note that the child's head is actually two heads, though meshed together. I want to speak up, but I hold my tongue. I might put my co-worker in an uncomfortable situation, where he would need to explain the child's deformity.

Carla: The mythic image of the Roman god Janus comes to mind here. With his two faces, one looking forward and the other back, he is a threshold deity; he oversees the transition from one state to another and is often placed above doors. Janus oversees the beginning and end of things; the month January is named for him.

In my version of Symbolfinder’s dream, I feel a major transition about to take place in my life.  Something is ending, and a new phase is about to begin. Since all the characters in my dream represent some part of me, the coworker is a possibly neglected aspect of my psyche that wants to play a greater role in my life. He is in a doorway (a place of transition). The baby he is carrying looks like him, but has two faces, one that can be shown to the world and another that’s not quite right. The second face is not yet fully formed; its incompleteness suggests that this emergent part of me is not ready for prime time. This is emphasized when I stop myself from speaking. Since I want to speak; why don’t I? I am concerned for my coworker, the part of me that carries the burden of this newly emergent part. I feel the world is not ready to accept me as I am, therefore I see my two-headed baby as a deformity. When I get to the point that I can accept this not-so-perfect part of myself, I predict I will be able to embrace both the baby and the coworker, and the two heads will become one.

Symbolfinder’s Analysis:
Shadow / Co-worker:  In real life the co-worker is impulsive, unreflective, and inappropriately crosses corporate boundaries. While he holds good technical knowledge, his social intelligence is sometimes weak.He represents a shadow of mine - the unreflective, impulsive part of my personality (it is there!). I am very aware of this side of myself, and that it is a shadow. I have been correcting this side of my personality. Infant/Unconscious:  The infant is symbolic of all my potential, but also my current immature state or stage of true awareness. The two faces, I believe, represent my conscious and unconscious. The front complete face is my rationality, which is strong and well developed. The backward-looking underdeveloped face is my unconscious, which is weaker.

Me in the dream: In the dream I hold my tongue, thinking if I ask about the two-faced infant, I will embarrass my co-worker. This is the practical part of the dream and its key message: I sometimes speak unconsciously, and would benefit from more conscious, regulated and filtered speaking. You see, my profession forces me to be objective about people and their actions, and sometimes the truth can hurt, especially if impulsively spoken. Additionally I must ask myself - in my well intentioned corporate maneuvering have I been two-faced? Does my dream simply show my shadow is an immature being with two faces? Thus part of my shadow is that I am two-faced! Materializing the unconscious can give you unpleasant but necessary lessons for life.

Wonder and awe:  Some browsing of the images on an  alchemy web site demonstrate the symbol of a two-headed person (often with each sex represented).  While my dream did not exhibit the hermaphrodite symbolism, nonetheless my unconscious chose to use this symbol. I am in awe that I am dreaming or projecting the same unconscious properties as my alchemical ancestors of hundreds of years ago.
My Jungian lesson: Jung wrote in 'The Psychic Nature of the Alchemical Work' :
"...he (the alchemist) experienced his projection as a property of matter; but what he was in reality experiencing was his own unconscious... as we all know, science began with the stars, and mankind discovered in them the dominants of the unconscious, the 'gods'..."

The unconscious projects its' material onto my dreams, my dreams usually focus on my day's emotions. It uses its' own language of symbols to digest my emotions; the symbols are bizarre to the laymen, but they are interpretable. The symbols are ancient and deep and have utility to the unconscious. If there was no utility, they would not have been stored in our DNA.

Making use of this dream: Dream analysis has a practical end for me - it is not idle fantasizing. This dream represents (once again) that:

1. My impulsive, unreflective shadow still lives
2. At work in the corporate environment, sometimes my shadowy unconscious is at work, and it/I can be two faced
3. My knowledge of the unconscious and all its' working is still immature, and I must continue learning and leveraging its language, symbols and messages.

Who’s in the Driver’s Seat?

The Dream: My friend Mary and I are in the back seat of a van. A man, with a child of about two years old, sits in the front. I notice the baby is driving, standing on the seat to reach the steering wheel. I am upset and concerned that the father allows his son to drive. I tell the father that I’m “not comfortable” with this baby driving the car. The father gets very angry at me. He talks about his own childhood, telling me how capable he was. He seems to feel his own capabilities were not recognized. I am surprised at his unreasonable outburst. I sit in stony silence, tightening my seat belt and suggesting to my friend that she do the same. Mary, a social worker, tries to engage the father in conversation, and afterward he takes over the driving.

Interpretation: I had been reading Bruno Bettelheim’s analysis of Hansel and Gretel, in which he looks at their actions as choices. For example, finding their way back home after their first expulsion is a regression: the children want to return to the babyish stage of life when parents give all and demand nothing. The mother, once she has expectations of her children, becomes a “witch” to them. The eating of her house symbolizes the children's infantile greediness: they eat their parents out of house and home.* From reading Bettelheim’s interpretations, my unconscious began to deal with the idea of my infantile self being in charge, in other words, with my being driven by the baby. When I protest my “adult,” who has a couple of unresolved childish issues of his own, responds with anger to my suggestion that he take control. Once this conflict is mediated by my social worker friend, who in waking life facilitates communication, a resolution can occur: the adult resumes his rightful place in the driver’s seat.

*Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment, Vintage Books Edition, Random House, New York, May 2010, 208-217.

A Baby’s on the Way

The Dream: I am pregnant, about to give birth. A friend has come for the event. The doctor has called and told me the birth will be in about a week. I tell this to my close circle of friends and family, and I begin to fret. I don’t want to have a caesarian and don’t know why I should, since both my previous children were delivered normally. Then I remember my age and how long it’s been since I last had a baby. I remember my Lamaze coach saying that each birth is unique; this experience will not necessarily be like a previous one.

Interpretation: I have just started a new painting and am concerned that my new “baby” might not come out the way I would like it to.

The Frog and the Baby

The Dream: An earlier dream about a frog morphed into one about an adorable baby, whose diaper I’m having a lot of trouble changing. I mention to no one in particular that it was not such a problem when I had to change my own children.  The baby is very patient. By the time I get her clean diaper on I think she’s already wet herself again, but I don’t want to investigate that too far because I’d have to go through the trouble of another change. Her parent is going to take her someplace in a convertible, so I place her on the back seat, propped up like a papoose. Then I think better of it, fearing she might go flying out and come to harm. I suggest to the parent that we put her on the floor of the backseat. He comes to look to make sure the spot is a good one and that she will fit into it, and then concurs.

Interpretation: This dream is about some part of me that I don’t like becoming acceptable. The appearance of the frog tips the dream’s hand: in the fairy tale the despised frog turns into a prince. The nascent part of myself (the baby) presents me with some difficulties (she is hard to change), and I underline the difficulty when I comment that my own children were “not such a problem.” After a struggle I am successful in changing the baby, but the effect doesn’t last: she immediately wets herself. This tells me she represents a persistent part of my unconscious, and one that I would rather not take a look at. (I don’t want to investigate that too far.)

But one way or another, change is going to take place. A parent (male) arrives in a convertible (a car that converts, i.e., changes). I hand the newly emergent part of myself (the baby) off to this animus figure (the part of me that deals with the outside world). Both my animus and I seek to protect this newly formed, or discovered, part. However, as we protect her we also put her in the backseat, on the floor, where she can’t be seen--or get into trouble.

For a dream featuring a baby and a spider see Baby and Spider
For other dreams featuring frogs see My Inner Frog and Pass It On

Dead Babies in Boxes

Ever had an awful dream and wondered how truly disturbed you must be? Sometimes, when you stop and think about it, you realize its actual meaning is pretty mundane.

The Dream: Another dead baby dream. This time the “baby” was a little older, maybe a toddler. Three dead babies are in square boxes.

Interpretation: Many dream workers suggest that a “baby” is a new idea or project. Since this one is a toddler (2 to 3 years old) it must be a project I’ve had for a while. Since it’s “dead” it seems pretty clear that it isn’t going well. (I can think of a few projects in that category.) My dream tells me I’m feeling boxed in by these fruitless projects.