Baby dreams

The other day at my 3rd annual Christmas cookie decorating day with my girlfriends, we were discussing Ryder's sleep habits and it came up that sometimes he'll wake up in the middle of the night screaming bloody murder (the kind of cry he has when he gets his shots) but yet, his eyes are closed and he's not awake when you go in there. My friend Camille brought up the good question, "What could a baby possibly dream about?" I mean, they have so little experiences to draw upon. My answer was that he must have had a bad dream that all the milk dried up in mommy's boobs. That's my guess at least! Then this morning, Ryder woke up at 6am and cried and cried and even cried harder after I left the room when I gave him his paci (which usually he falls right back to sleep with the paci). So because I wasn't ready to get up yet, I brought Ryder in our bed with Joe and me (I always said I would NEVER do that...which I normally don't--infact that was only the second time I've ever done that...BUT, I've learned that you do what you have to do!) Anyways, Ryder fell right back to sleep the minute we put him between us and it was so cute, not long after he fell asleep, he started laughing in his sleep. It was so stinking cute, Joe and I were trying to be quiet as we laughed together over how sweet it was. My guess of what he was dreaming of: a room filled with boobs bursting full of milk :)

To answer the question of whether or not babies dream, and more importantly, to find evidence supporting my theory that babies dream of boobs and milk....I took to google.com! I found out that babies spend 2x as much of their sleep cycles in the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep, which is when humans dream. Experts say it's safe to assume babies dream, but unfortunately, we 'll never know what they dream about since they obviously are unable to tell us. Here's a cute little article blurb that I found, and I couldn't agree more with the author! (taken from parentdish.com)

"Babies dream," says Dr. Charles P. Pollak, director of the Center for Sleep Medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital in the New York Times.
....because infants have REM sleep," Dr. Pollack says, "it is a well-based inference that babies are dreaming in REM sleep."....
But what do babies dream about? Dr. Pollard does not even hazard to guess. Dr. Pollak says that asking him what babies dream about "is like asking whether your pet dog or cat is dreaming, because they can't communicate, and you can't ask. We presume that infants dream infantile things, but we don't really know what it is that they dream." My old dog used to bark while she dreamed and her feet would move like she was running. Clearly she was dreaming about what she spent 80 percent of her day thinking about (chasing squirrels). I will state on the record that my baby dreams about nipples. Gigantic pink nipples atop rapturous breasts....

The article continues for a short while after that, but I laughed right out loud when I read the above bolded sentence. I laughed simply because I totally agree that was what Ryder was thinking about this morning when laughing happily in his sweet, sweet baby sleep :)