how do different paths explain this?

[mermaidmama]

When I was pregnant with my son, I had several dreams about him. He is completely the same child that I met in those dreams. He looks the same. His personality is the same. His very essence is the same. And I always new that this baby I dreamt about was my baby. I am interested if anyone else has had this experience? Also, how different religions would explain this sort of thing. Thank you!

[Bluegoat]

Well, I think that from my Anglican Christian viewpoint, I would say there were quite a number of possibilities:

1. It is a coincidence.

2. Your feelings about the dream child are the same as those about your real child, and are what give you the overwhelming feeling it is the same child. Because memory is not perfect or photographic, but highly influenced by context and emotion, you remember the child in the dream as identical to the real child.

3. It's a dream from God, for some reason.

4. It's a dream from a demon or the Devil, for some reason.

5. It involves some process we don't understand.

In any case, the important thing is how you mother the child now, I think Christians generally feel it is a bad idea to concentrate on these kind of strange events too much, or attempts to foretell the future. They are good if good comes out of them, but bad if they give rise to bad things.

[singin_angel]

From a pagan perspective:

Dreams can tell us a lot about what is going on in our lives. I had a similar experience, I had two dreams of my daughter before she was born and she looks just like she did in the dreams.

From this perspective, it would be highlighting the connection between mom and baby, bringing you information about your child and helping you bond before the birth.

If we pay attention to our dreams, we can often learn a lot about our lives and situations we might be facing.

[AprilDaisy]

A friend of mine had this happen to her in regards to both of her children.

[aweynsayl]

my ds is who i knew he'd be even before i was pregnant. there used to be a thread in this forum about spirit babies, there's a bit in there you might find interesting... from my pagan perspective, there's an element of we've been together before, so of course we know each other... but there are a lot of different takes, obviously.

[dianakaye]

Mormon Perspective:


We believe that before we were born we lived with God and all of our spiritual brothers and sisters (everyone that has been on this earth). We chose/accepted to come to Earth in our families. So you knew your son before this life began--which is probably why your dream was accurate in terms of his essence/personality. I'm not sure if there would be a concrete reason why you had the dream, but in my opinion (not necessarily a Mormon idea) the dream was probably preparing your for the future.

[craft_media_hero]

This happened to me, too! How cool! I never met anyone IRL who dreamt of their babies before birth; I think it's pretty special.

She is who she was in my dream; I always knew her. Sometimes we talk about how she was in my body as an egg, so we were always together, even before she was born. I could only imagine her one way, and I could only imagine one name. I knew she was a girl and what she would look like NOW. She looks now like she did in the dream when she was en utero.

I believe in reincarnation; so does she For me the dream was proof that she is meant to be with me exactly how and when she got here, that she "knew" me before birth. I feel like my family has been together before, and we're meant to be together now. I believe her bright little spirit chose us for her parents. She was 3 or so when she met my DP, and she recognized him right away. She introduced him as her dad on our first official date LOL any guy who'd stick around after that must be a dad of destiny. He's said that he always wanted to adopt a little girl and that when he pictured her, she always looked like V. How awesome is that? Even tho it would seem like a bad thing that her bio father was absent, it was perfect because it led us to where we are now. I am so grateful to him for giving us exactly what we needed for our family.

Anyways, that's how I interpret it---that no matter what doubts I may ever have about myself or our family unit, it's totally unfounded. It's proof to me of how perfect we are just as we are and any insecurities are just that. It gives me a faith that resonates with the Hindu concept that the universe is perfect exactly as it is for what it needs to be right now.

[Super Pickle]

Something similar happened to me with my firstborn.

I'm Christian. I don't know what the "true" explanation is, but here's my best guess: We subconsiously pick up on a lot of things that don't make it to the surface. We know things that we don't realize we know. Our conscious minds sometimes try to stuff away facts that we may not wish to acknowledge. So, sometimes, we dream about things that are going to happen because we have been picking up little clues all along, and it's only in the uninhibited mode of dreaming that our minds can synthesize and interpret everything.

Or maybe it's one way God communicates with us. In my case, I do feel that the dreams were a gift from God, as they ultimately brought life and love.

[hibana]

'Nother Anglican Christian here. What a special dream to have had! I don't try to explain how it works, but I don't believe it is a coincidence. I've had prophetic dreams and premonitions many times before, and I can always tell them from normal dreams, even if the subject doesn't relate in any way to my life at that time. If it's something that disturbs me, or I don't understand it, I sometimes analyze it based on what the Bible says about things that are "from God".

Unrelated, but I also had a "Solomon dream" when I was younger in which I was given two choices about my life. Since then, every major event or turning point (and countless, countless everyday things) has reflected that choice. Many of these things were well out of my control, so it's not like I was the one making it all happen to validate my own thoughts on "destiny".

[Baha'iMama]

The Baha'i perspective would be that while sleeping, your soul was in communion with the soul of the child within you. We are taught that during sleep, the soul can easily traverse spiritual realms unknown to the waking mind. One of my favorite quotes from Baha'i scriptures is something Baha'u'llah wrote about the dream-state:

"Know thou of a truth that the worlds of God are countless in their number, and infinite in their range. None can reckon or comprehend them except God, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise.

Consider thy state when asleep. Verily, I say, this phenomenon is the most mysterious of the signs of God amongst men, were they to ponder it in their hearts. Behold how the thing which thou hast seen in thy dream is, after a considerable lapse of time, fully realized. Had the world in which thou didst find thyself in thy dream been identical with the world in which thou livest, it would have been necessary for the event occurring in that dream to have transpired in this world at the very moment of its occurrence. Were it so, you yourself would have borne witness unto it.

This being not the case, however, it must necessarily follow that the world in which thou livest is different and apart from that which thou hast experienced in thy dream. This latter world hath neither beginning nor end. It would be true if thou wert to contend that this same world is, as decreed by the All-Glorious and Almighty God, within thy proper self and is wrapped up within thee. It would equally be true to maintain that thy spirit, having transcended the limitations of sleep and having stripped itself of all earthly attachment, hath, by the act of God, been made to traverse a realm which lieth hidden in the innermost reality of this world.

Verily I say, the creation of God embraceth worlds besides this world, and creatures apart from these creatures."

- Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh Revealed After the Kitáb-i-Aqdas (The Most Holy Book)

[juliebird]

I too dreamt of my first born while I was pregnant with him. I dreamt of a river and a big, fair haired, blue-eyed baby boy (in the dream he was as big as a year old not an infant). He was crossing the river, swimming in it to meet me.
And when he was born, what do ya know? he was a big, fair-haired, blue-eyed (well they're all blue-eyed!) boy. I didn't find out whether I was having a boy or a girl, so it was all the more special to me.
I also remember the feeling of just amazement that he had an awesome personality, calm, agreeable, joyful...and a great big smile. He's now 14 and has exhibited those traits all through life

FWIW, I didn't have dreams of my other two kids while pregnant. I probably would've explained it back then as God blessing me with an introduction...not sure how I'd explain it today (Still working on that one).