I asked a doctor what do babies dream about and the truth hurts

It was three in the morning in our drafty Chicago apartment when my son let out a sound that was half-giggle, half-choke. I stood over his bassinet, gripping the edge like I was bracing for an earthquake. His eyes were darting rapidly under paper-thin eyelids. His legs were kicking in tiny, uncoordinated spasms. Suddenly, his face contorted into a massive, gummy grin. I remember thinking he looked completely deranged.

My exhausted brain immediately started searching for explanations. What do babies dream about to make them look like tiny, twitching villains. I actually pulled out my phone in the dark and typed is my babie possessed or dreaming into the search bar because sleep deprivation does terrible things to your spelling and your sanity.

I've seen a thousand of these twitchy infants during my days on the pediatric ward. When you're triaging a room full of RSV cases and jaundice, a sleeping baby making weird faces barely registers on the radar. You just check their vitals and move on. But when it's your own kid, clinical objectivity goes out the window.

My pediatrician ruins the magic

At his next checkup, I cornered Dr. Patel. I told her he was having these vivid, intense dreams where he smiled and kicked. I asked her if she thought he was dreaming about me or maybe about his milk.

She looked at me over her glasses with that tired expression only seasoned pediatricians possess. She reminded me that I'm a nurse and I should know better. The truth she handed me was honestly a little insulting. According to her interpretation of the sleep data, they're not dreaming about us at all.

Human sleep is split into deep sleep and REM sleep. Dr. Patel explained that newborns spend up to half their lives in REM sleep, which is the phase where adults have those weird dreams about showing up to high school without pants. But for infants, this stage is just an aggressive construction zone. Their brains are supposedly building neural pathways and filing away memories from the day. It's mostly just biological housecleaning.

So the prevailing medical theory is that they don't experience narrative dreams the way we do. They don't have a sense of self or the visual imagination required to construct a storyline. When they smile in their sleep, it's not because they're remembering your face. It's just a random muscle spasm caused by a surge of electrical activity in their developing brain.

The obsession with infant emotions

It drives me absolutely crazy how desperate we're to assign complex adult emotions to biological reflexes. You log onto social media and there's an army of beige-wearing sleep consultants telling you that your infant's sleep grimace means they're processing generational trauma or some other nonsense. We project our own feelings onto a creature that literally just learned how to pass gas on purpose.

This whole industry thrives on making parents feel like they're missing some deep, spiritual connection with their infant. They sell you guides on how to interpret sleep twitches and decode nighttime sighs. It's exhausting enough trying to keep a tiny human alive without having to act as a dream interpreter for someone whose brain is the size of an apple.

The reality is that their brains are just running a software update. All that kicking and smiling is just hardware testing, making sure the nerves are connected to the muscles. But nobody wants to hear that their precious angel is basically just a buffering computer program because it doesn't make for a cute caption.

Babies don't have nightmares because they don't have the cognitive capacity to invent monsters yet.

Sensory snapshots in the dark

Listen, if you're feeling a little crushed by the science, Dr. Patel did offer a tiny bit of hope. While they might not be dreaming of running through a field or playing peek-a-boo, some researchers think they experience sensory snapshots.

Since they spend so much time in REM sleep processing the day, they might be experiencing flashes of whatever their senses took in. The smell of breast milk. The scratchiness of a cheap carpet. The sound of their mother whispering chup kar beta when they won't settle down. It's not a movie, it's more like a slideshow of random sensory inputs.

I guess there's some comfort in knowing that if they do dream, it's just a vague blur of warmth and milk. It makes sense why their sleep environment matters so much. If their brain is busy cataloging the physical sensations of the day, you probably don't want them processing the feeling of polyester sweat.

Managing the midnight spasms

Because they spend so much time in this hyper-active REM stage, they wake up constantly. Their bodies are jerking around, and since they've no control over their limbs, they end up punching themselves in the face and ruining everyone's night.

You have to figure out how to lock them down without making them miserable. When my son was going through his most violent sleep-twitching phase, I relied heavily on swaddling to suppress that startle reflex. We had this one specific blanket that basically saved my life.

It was the Organic Cotton Baby Blanket with Squirrel Print from Kianao. I'm usually pretty cynical about baby prints, but the squirrels were subtle enough not to annoy me. The real reason I loved it was the weight. It was heavy enough to keep his flailing arms secured when I wrapped him, but breathable enough that he didn't wake up smelling like a damp locker room. We used that thing every single night until he learned to roll over. It got softer every time I threw it in the wash after a blowout.

We also tried the Sleeveless Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit for underneath the swaddle. It's fine. It's a bodysuit. It does exactly what it's supposed to do, which is provide a clean layer that doesn't irritate their skin. It has elastane in it so you don't have to dislocate their shoulders to get it on. I used it mostly as a barrier so he wouldn't sweat directly onto his good blankets.

If you want to look at more options to swaddle your twitchy infant, you can explore the organic baby blankets collection to find something that works for your climate.

The waiting game

The science says real dreams don't start until they're two or three years old. Even then, they're mostly just dreaming about animals or eating. It's not until they're much older that they become the star of their own complex night visions.

Until then, we just have to sit in the dark and watch them twitch. Instead of hovering over the crib and wondering if you should wake them up from what looks like a bad dream, just back away slowly and go drink your cold coffee before they start crying for real.

We actually ended up buying the Autumn Hedgehog Organic Cotton Baby Blanket as a backup because I accidentally left the squirrel one at my mother-in-law's house and I refused to endure a night of his unrestrained REM sleep spasms. It has the same nice texture, and the mustard yellow hides formula stains really well. Whatever you choose, just make sure it keeps them comfortable while their brain does its weird biological filing.

If you need gear that actually breathes while your kid runs their nightly software update, check out the sustainable baby products at Kianao.

The messy truth about newborn sleep

Are those sleep smiles real or just gas?

Most of the time it's neither. It's just REM sleep muscle spasms. Their brain is firing off electrical signals while it builds neural pathways, and sometimes those signals hit the facial muscles. Occasionally it's gas, but it's almost never a reaction to a happy thought. Sorry to ruin the illusion, yaar. They're just twitching.

Why does my baby breathe so weirdly when they sleep?

This terrified me the first week. They will breathe really fast, then pause for what feels like ten years, then take a deep sigh. It's called periodic breathing and it's completely normal during their active sleep phases. I used to stare at his chest with my nurse brain screaming, but Dr. Patel told me to stop torturing myself. Unless they're turning blue, just let them be.

Should I wake them up if they cry in their sleep?

Listen, unless they're fully awake and demanding service, leave them alone. Sometimes they let out a sharp cry or a whimper right in the middle of a sleep cycle and then immediately go back to twitching. If you pick them up, you're just going to wake them fully, and then you're both going to be miserable. Pause for a minute and see if they settle.

When do babies dream about actual things?

The sleep researchers say it doesn't happen until they're toddlers. Around age two or three, they might start having static slideshow dreams about a dog they saw or a snack they ate. But they don't have narrative, movie-like dreams with plots until they're like seven years old. Right now, it's all just biological static.

Do babies dream in the womb?

Nobody honestly knows for sure, but the theory is similar to newborn sleep. Fetuses spend almost all their time in a state similar to REM sleep. Their brains are developing at a terrifying speed, so they're likely just processing the muffled sounds and the physical sensation of floating. It's all sensory data, no storylines.