When adults fall asleep, we experience a cycle called light sleep and deep sleep. In light sleep, our brain and body adjusts from being awake to being asleep. This is the stage that dreams often occur. On the other hand, deep sleep is when our body and brain is fully at rest. The transition from light sleep to deep sleep happens on the first hour of sleep. However, for babies, the transitions happen in a shorter span of time occurs multiple times during sleep. This explains that yes, babies do have dreams and they dream more than the adults do. About 70% of their sleeping time, they experience dreaming.
When Do Babies Start to Have Dreams?
Studies shows that as early as 30 weeks gestation, a baby inside his mother’s womb could already experience REM (Rapid Eye Movement) Sleep. REM is when one’s eyeballs keep moving behind the eyelids. This is also the phase of sleep that dreams occur. So even from inside his mommy’s tummy, few weeks before he is born, a child can already experience dreaming.
What Do Babies Dream About?
Babies can already smell, hear and feel from the time he’s still in the womb. A Pediatric Expert says that a baby inside the womb might have dreams about his amniotic world and his everyday experiences inside his mother. From newborn stage and infancy, every changes he could encounter and development he had may improve his dreaming as well. From the clearer vision of his room, to the soothing feeling he had when sucking his pacifier. All his dreams would vary from his day to day life experiences.
Do Babies Have Nightmares Too?
Worry not mommy, it is said that an infant still don’t register his fears to include it in his dreams. Your baby could have cried during sleep, and there might be some reason for that, but babies don’t usually experience nightmares until he reaches the age of 3-5 years old.
Can dreams affect baby’s moods?
No, babies might not even be able to remember what he dreamed about during sleep. Most likely, by the time a baby wakes up, he will already put behind what he had dreamed about. And also, since they have multiple dreams during sleep, it’s no longer possible to remember and get affect by it.
Dreaming plays a big role in an adult’s world. That is the reason why parents are often wondering too if their babies could dream. Even though babies could dream, their dreams does not affect them same as how it does to adults. Their dreams are just happy fragments of their everyday experiences.