Dreams are stories your mind creates when you are asleep. They allow you to go beyond your conscious awareness to comprehend the thoughts and emotions you would have felt when awake. An average person has 3 to 5 dreams each night, the ones during the rapid-eye movement (REM) stage of sleep being the most vivid. Since expecting mothers tend to wake up more often during the night, they go through several phases of REM sleep. During pregnancy, vivid, weird, and frightening dreams are quite common. They can be a result of hormonal fluctuations that affect the intensity of emotions. Your fear and anxiety of giving birth often manifest into nightmares, which should not be considered premonitions of something bad to come.