Ever wondered if your newborn’s restless sleep means they’re having bad dreams?
You’re not alone. Parents everywhere have watched their baby stir, twitch, or cry out and wondered what’s happening in that tiny, still-developing mind.
They’ve barely been alive long enough to know anything scary, right? And yet, sometimes it really looks like something’s bothering them.
Their little eyebrows knit together, their lips quiver, maybe they let out a soft cry mid-nap.
It’s enough to make a parent’s heart clench.
Do Babies Really Dream?
Now, whether newborns can actually have bad dreams, that’s where things get interesting.
Science doesn’t hand us a clear, tied-with-a-bow answer (honestly, science rarely does with dreams).
Newborns spend a huge portion of their sleep in what’s called REM sleep, the rapid-eye-movement stage where adults do most of their dreaming.
Nearly half their sleep time, in fact, is spent in that stage, compared to only about a quarter in grown-ups.
According to the Harvard Medical School Division of Sleep Medicine, newborns can cycle into REM sleep in as little as 50 minutes, which is astonishingly quick.
So, naturally, people assume, “Ah, they must be dreaming!” But hold on a minute.
Dreaming requires memory, imagination, and emotional processing, things that are still under construction in a newborn’s brain.
Still, I can’t help but wonder.
Maybe it’s not about bad dreams at all. Maybe what looks like distress, a sudden startle, a tiny cry…is just their nervous system sorting itself out.
Think about it: they’ve just left the most peaceful, dark, warm environment imaginable. And now they’re bombarded with sounds, light, touch, air.
That’s a lot to adjust to. Who wouldn’t twitch a bit?
The Science Behind “Active Sleep”
There’s also this thing researchers call “active sleep.”
It’s sort of like REM, but for infants. Their brains fire off signals as they learn how to control their limbs and reactions.
Neuroscientists at the University of Iowa have even suggested that these early bursts of brain activity during active sleep help wire motor pathways, kind of like a rehearsal before they can consciously move.
So, those weird little movements could be their body practicing, sort of a pre-show warm-up before they take center stage in the waking world.
I suppose it’s possible that, in the midst of all that chaos, they experience sensations that feel dreamlike.
Maybe not stories with villains and chase scenes, but flashes of warmth, sounds, heartbeat rhythms.
A sensory replay of the womb, perhaps.
And yet, the romantic part of me, the human, not the scientist, likes to think maybe they do dream, in their own way.
Not nightmares, exactly, but strange, floating memories of voices and muffled light.
Maybe even echoes of their mother’s heartbeat, like an old song stuck in their head.
If so, can a newborn really have bad dreams?
Or are we projecting our adult fears onto their blank-slate minds?
Why It’s Probably Not Night Terrors
Some parents swear their baby wakes up screaming, eyes wide, trembling.
“Night terrors!” they call them. But actual night terrors don’t really appear until later, around preschool age, when imagination has bloomed enough to conjure up monsters and shadows.
What newborns experience is more likely a startle reflex or brief sleep disturbance. Pediatric neurologists often point to the Moro reflex, a primitive startle reaction that peaks in the first few months of life, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Still, try explaining that to a sleep-deprived parent at 3 a.m. when their baby’s wailing like the world’s ending.
There’s this one memory I can’t shake, a friend telling me her baby used to cry out softly in sleep, then smile right after.
“Like he dreamed of losing me and finding me again,” she said. It’s poetic, I guess.
Maybe that’s what newborn dreams are: fragments of safety and loss, a flicker of connection they can’t yet name.
Perhaps we’re not meant to know.
Dreaming is mysterious enough in adults; in babies, it’s like trying to read poetry written in smoke.
All we can do is comfort them, whisper softly, rock them gently, and hope whatever passes through their tiny minds is kind.
And if they do have bad dreams?
Well, perhaps they just need a reminder that they’re safe now.
The world’s big and loud, but love, in its own sleepy way, is louder.
References:
- Harvard Medical School Division of Sleep Medicine – Infant Sleep Cycles and REM Development
- University of Iowa Neuroscience Department – Research on “Active Sleep” and Motor Pathway Formation in Infants
- American Academy of Pediatrics – Moro Reflex and Newborn Sleep Behavior
