Just exactly what dreams are and what makes us dream is still a mystery. We do know in what stage of sleep people dream. This is not in deep sleep, but in dream sleep, called the REM phase. REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement. This phase of sleep is called this because the eyes move very quickly.

The amount of dream sleep declines over the first year. Babies devote the largest part of the night or day to dream sleep. Babies who are born after a pregnancy of 25 weeks even spend their entire sleeping time in dream sleep. By 32 weeks this becomes 80 percent. At that point the first signs of 'deep' sleep appear. Children born at full term spend 45 to 65 percent of sleep time in dream sleep. After three months 43 percent, after twelve months 30 percent, and by the time your baby has become an adolescent, only 20 percent is dream sleep.

Because a young baby's periods of dream sleep are longer than ours, it seems logical to assume that your baby dreams more then we do. Whether you can compare their dream sleep with ours is difficult to say. Sometimes as a parent you will see that your baby is dreaming, in a good way or a bad way. The question remains whether they really have 'story' dreams, or if they dream about basic feelings and emotions.