Do babies dream? Doctors have a definitive answer
Categories: Health & safety, Development
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.
In what seems like a rather gutless attempt to explain why he thinks babies dream, Dr. Pollack says, babies sleep because babies experience REM sleep (I have experienced REM sleep, too, any time you put in one of their last five albums). 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). Luckily, there are no barriers like the scientific method or the Hippocratic Oath in blogging. I will state on the record that my baby dreams about nipples, gigantic pink nipples atop rapturous breasts, their sweet taste trapped like tea on her tongue.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
amanda 12-18-2005 @ 7:03PM
When my daughter was a newborn, she used to smile in her sleep, like all babies do. I once looked at my father and said, "I would love to know what she is dreaming about." He replied, "I bet I could guess - it's either the left one or the right one." If you think about it, food occupies their little lives at that point, so it makes sense.
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HollyRhea 12-18-2005 @ 7:03PM
My husband dreams about the same thing.
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