Pregnancy can shape a mother’s dreams toward flood and loss imagery

Evidence

Linda was asleep beside me. I knew that the child she bore inside also influenced her dreams, which were worryingly often about water: enormous waves crashing down on distant beaches where she was walking; the apartment flooding with water, sometimes completely filling it, either trickling down walls or rising from sinks and toilets; lakes in new places in town, such as under the railway station where her child might be in a left-luggage locker she couldn’t reach, or it simply disappeared from her side while she had her hands full of bags. She also had dreams in which the child she gave birth to had an adult face, or it turned out there wasn’t a child at all and all that flowed from her during the birth was water. — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 1120

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to dream research on symbolism of pregnancy anxiety; also to Knausgaard’s broader theme of water and drowning of the self. — connects to: Grief can possess a mourner’s dreams and invade waking compulsions — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 2550

Broader Connections

• Grief can possess a mourner’s dreams and invade waking compulsions #expands (0.60) — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 2550