If you are pregnant and you dream that labor and delivery was difficult, it probably reflects anxieties about the impending birth. The same applies to dreams about giving birth to an animal; they are simply mirroring your concerns and anxieties.
If you are a prospective father, your dream may also be depicting your hopes and fears for the welfare of your unborn child.
If you are not pregnant, birth dreams can indicate a desire for children but are more likely to represent something else in waking life. The birth of a child signals a new beginning and the emergence of new life; in dreams the meaning is much the same: a new way of life, a new attitude, a new discovery, a new project and so on.
If you hear about a birth, or watch or witness a birth in your dream, this also suggests the beginning of a new and fruitful cycle in your life.
Birth dreams therefore are an expression of big changes that have been occurring for a long period of time. Did the dream delivery go well or was it difficult?
Again, the answer may indicate the likely ease of turning your hopes into reality.
If this doesn’t apply, then dream births may symbolize your brain child, perhaps an idea or a project you are longing to complete successfully.
Alternatively, did your dream focus on one aspect of birth—the umbilical cord, for example? If the cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck, this may indicate that your ideas are being strangled or in danger of being strangled.
If the cord was neatly severed, this can indicate that your ideas have been cut free and are now independent of you.
If there were problems cutting the cord, this could be a symbol of a grown-up family that is beginning to leave home. Or it may be that you yourself are finding it hard to fly the family nest and branch out on your own.
If you are not able to see your baby after a difficult labor, this can indicate that you are laboring in vain in waking life and aren’t being rewarded by the sight of your mental offspring. [1]
A difficult birth may represent problems in delivering a product to the marketplace.
A premature birth may remark that you are way ahead of yourself and others and, as a result, your ideas may not have been cultivated long enough in order to be realized. [2]