Announcer (00:00:04) - This is Dream Power Radio, the place where your dreams turn into reality. Here is your host, Debbie Spector Weisman.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:00:13) - Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Dream Power Radio. I'm your host, Certified Dream Life Coach Debbie Spector Weisman. This is a place that we talk about dreams, both daytime and nighttime dreams, and how you can use them to make the internal shift to a life you love and rediscover the truth of who you really are.
We're turning our attention to nighttime dreams today, and in particular, a very special type of dream that happens through a definitive group of people at a specific time in their lives. Sounds a little mysterious, huh? Maybe. We're talking about announcement dreams, the dreams that revolve around pregnancy. They're perhaps not as well understood as other types of dreams, but well worth investigating. One person who has researched this phenomenon is holistic psychotherapist Dr. Kimberly Mascaro. She's making a return appearance on Dream Power Radio to share some findings about these extraordinary dreams. Dr. Kim is also a visual artist and the author of several books, including Dream Medicine: The Intersection of Wellness and Consciousness, and Extraordinary Dreams: Visions, Announcements, and Premonitions Across Time and Place.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:01:26) - Welcome back to Dream Power Radio, Kim. Thanks for having me back, Debbie. Good to be here because I love to talk about dreams. But, Kim, what got you interested in studying announcing dreams?
Kimberly Mascaro (00:01:38) - Well, it's kind of interesting because it was by way of other people sharing their stories with me. Not a direct experience in any way. And there also wasn't much research out there at all, if any. So it was through other people. My cousin, my cousin Tracy actually, and a few acquaintances I knew had shared announcing dreams with me. But my cousin Tracy's dream was pretty powerful and that got me interested in what's going on here at this time of a woman's life --when she's pregnant, she's going through this major transition and her body's changing. Her thoughts and feelings are changing. And here the reporting, some really powerful dreams, really striking experiences that some light up when they tell them, even 20 years later.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:02:31) - Wow, that is amazing. So now you have to tell me what was her dream or what was one of her very powerful dreams that she had?
Kimberly Mascaro (00:02:38) - Well, the one that I found really interesting was it kind of had a couple parts. So it began with a pregnancy where a baby girl came to her. And I hope I'm getting this right. Tracy, if you're listening, a baby girl came to her and said, I'm not your baby. It was a very memorable, striking dream. Very clear to the point. And in many dreamers know that some dreams are full of symbolism and interesting things. But some sometimes our dreams are just very direct. So this was a very direct experience. She had woke up and had a miscarriage. So then doctors had told her, you're not going to get pregnant, probably right away. Don't, you know, don't think about that. But she tried for another child and in fact got pregnant pretty quickly, I think surprised some medical professionals and had another dream. And in this dream, a baby boy appeared and said, my name is. And I'll just say, blank and I am your baby. So then that pregnancy continued, even though it may have been considered a little risky. And she did birth a baby boy.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:03:51) - And then an interesting caveat is that she told me that when he began speaking, she asked who named you? And he said, I did. So I kind of found that a little carryover from the dream, which can happen. So that was probably the most striking dream. Examples that were so clear, so direct, matched the kind of waking state events. And between that and a couple other acquaintances that that were gracious and sharing their experience with me, that those got me on the trajectory of thinking, maybe I want to study this. And at the time, I was taking doctorate level courses in prenatal and perinatal psychology, and I had so many questions. I had worked in a therapeutic preschool. I have a long background in trauma history. There are trauma therapy, and so I found it really interesting to continue to want to. I was driven to want to go back and understand the stories of children's experience sciences as far back as I could. And of course, this involves the mother and often the entire family, but primarily the mother.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:05:02) - So that interest. And then the dreams came up. I said, of course the dreams affect that. The mother's experience, her dreaming life, her thoughts, her experiences in the day affect the fetus through hormones and biochemical things like that. All of this helped me decide I'm going to do a dissertation on this. And as you may have heard, everyone says you better pick a dissertation topic you're jazzed about because if not, it is really hard to get through it. I stayed jazzed about it. The entire was in a doctoral program for seven years, so stayed pretty excited about it.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:05:37) - Well, it is a kind of exciting topic. I mean, think about having dreams while you're pregnant. I wanted to ask you, are all announcing dreams that direct or is already about?
Kimberly Mascaro (00:05:51) - No, they're not always that direct, and that would also be culturally dependent as well. Time on pregnancy or birth dreams in Korea will have. There's a rich symbolism and lists of different images to see or expect to see.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:06:08) - You're expected to have a time to birth or to give birth, to bring a child into the world. And that is a very rich symbolically to let the family know the characteristics, the future, the fate of the child. But maybe, Debbie, we should describe or define what announcing dreams even are, though I'll back up and say some people had descriptions of what this was in literature, that maybe it was a little more religious based, anecdotal things like that, which is fine, but but for a dissertation, I really wanted to make a clear definition on what this was and move forward in a systematic way of studying this. So I'll say now, seeing dreams would be a type of pre-birth communication. So some of your listeners may be familiar with after death communication, other types of very trance hypnotic, dreamy or altered state communication. But this would be under the category of pre-birth communication and often between the mother and child. She's caring. Which makes sense. This fetus is developing in her body.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:07:22) - However, fathers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and sometimes in some cultures the entire community will experience and announcing dream. So again, an analogy. Dream is a pre-birth communication, typically between a parent and a child yet to be born, occurring during pregnancy or soon before. Sometimes an announcing dream can take place before conception. But in most of the research I had gathered, mostly we're looking at around the time of conception or pregnancy.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:07:55) - Often they happen during all phases of pregnancy.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:07:59) - They do. They do a lot during the first trimester, but they do. And so it's more than just a dream of a baby. A lot of the people experiencing announcing dreams, or all of them were really certain. The ones I talked to, at least that, oh yeah, I had dreams of babies, but I knew which one was mine. Or sometimes the child would even be a toddler or school age child and they would say, I knew which one belonged to me. I had a very strong connection to this one, and we could commune or had some type of communication in a very powerful way.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:08:38) - So in announcing dreams I was looking at, I didn't want symbolic as much as I wanted reports of where the women, because it was just for pregnant women in the in the study did pregnant women who who believed they physically saw their baby or had some type of communication with it, and some of the most striking ones were from my pilot study, if you want to call it. That was an official pilot study because I had enough, I think, reports gathered to just go into it, but I'll share a few from that time that I found to be pretty striking.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:09:15) - Okay.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:09:17) - So again, more than just a fantasy, there's visual, tactile, auditory sensation going on here that the dreamer reports to be quite strong.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:09:25) - So you want to go into telling us about a couple of these dreams.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:09:28) - Sure. Let's see. Let me I'm going to read a few if that's okay. I have my book from which the dissertation. Well, the dissertation informed this book obviously, but I'm going to read a few because I don't want to get the details wrong here.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:09:45) - So I'll read a few things. For anyone who has the book, I'm going to go into pages 90, 91, 92. And this is from an elementary school teacher, Puerto Rican woman really desiring to start a family. So I'll read what I have in the book here. So a little bit of story time, but that's okay.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:10:07) - They love stories.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:10:08) - Good. I've got a good one for you here. So it says my husband and I had been trying to conceive for one and a half years, and after a lot of struggle and frustration, we decided to take a break towards the end of the summer. Shortly after, in September, I had a dream of an adult sized baby boy kneeling on the floor by my bed. He was leaning on my bed, watching my husband and I sleeping. When I got up to look at him, he calmly whispered, I'm coming. This freaked me out because it was the first time a baby had ever appeared in my dreams. And I want to say just a side note, I can't help myself.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:10:47) - It was a dark place. You can't miss it. You know you cannot miss it. So maybe the dream she wrote was supposed to reassure me, inspire hope, or encourage me to keep trying. I guess those were some of my feelings, but you better believe I was angry and sad too. I felt like the dream was a tease, and maybe just a sign of my conscious longing for a baby. Well, to my surprise, I conceived the next month. So here's an example of a preconception. Then early January, I was about ten weeks pregnant and really hoping for a little girl. My husband wanted a boy, but more importantly, we both just wanted a healthy baby. I had gone to the doctor for a checkup and was a little upset that they didn't do a sonogram, just a heartbeat check. I wanted to see the baby as I was honestly still shocked that I was pregnant. I didn't believe it. As if the 15 extra pounds, constant exhaustion, profound hunger, nausea and stiffness wasn't enough to convince me, she laughs.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:11:48) - I came home that night from the checkup and meditated a bit. I was basically wanting to connect with the baby and express how much I wanted to see it. Well, that night I had another dream. So this can happen so there can be a series of announcing dreams so you can do dream incubation around this stuff. It's kind of cool. So in my dream, I was lying in my bed right next to my husband. Then my husband put his hand on my belly and his hand turned into a sonogram. Immediately, my husband and I both went into my body and into my uterus. It was so intense and real looking. When we were in there, we saw the baby hooked to the umbilical cord and everything. I saw the face and all of its body. I then looked down between the legs and saw a little. Right then my husband was just crawling into the bed and in the waking state, he comes home from work around 1 a.m. at the time, I suddenly woke up and with eyes still closed, I casually mother up to him, happy.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:12:49) - I just met the baby. It's a boy. He chuckled a little bit and held me to fall back asleep. When we woke up, he and I were talking in my sleep and I told him no, I really met the baby. So this is the example of that. Real like, this isn't just what experience I'll forget if she felt like she really met the child.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:13:09) - And all these women believe that this is actually their baby, that they're conceiving. They're not thinking this is just something made up.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:13:18) - The vast majority I talked to had a very convincing experience that I had a real connection with the child I'm carrying, or the child I'm about to become pregnant with. So it was much more rare to have someone say, oh, it didn't mean anything. It it happens every now and then, but some of it also is going to have to do with one's personal beliefs about their own power, their own connections to energy and source their own, you know, upbringing, belief system, history of dreaming, all of that.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:13:54) - So let's see.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:13:57) - Well, we're going to take a break now, and then we're going to come back more about announcing dreams.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:14:03) - Because I have two more for you.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:14:06) - Okay. Wonderful. We're talking with Dr. Kimberly Mascaro about announcing dreams. And we'll be right.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:14:54) - Yes. Welcome back to Dream Power Radio. I'm your host, Debbie Spector Weisman, and we're talking about announcing dreams with Dr. Kimberly Mascaro. Are all of these women who you had reports from, would they be consider active dreamers or did these dreams come into them totally out of the blue.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:15:14) - Not at all. It was a small minority that only 2 or 3 that I can just think about the top of my head. My study, I should say, with 22 pregnant women. And then I had a series of ones from the pilot study, and it a minority of women that were active in the dream world and maybe tracked dreams often. However, it's interesting because there's still a bit of a bias there, because who were the type to want to participate in the research in the first place? So there had to be something in the right that maybe was drawn to dreams in some way. I would say.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:15:52) - Then did any of these dreams ever have warnings for the mother to be? Maybe the child saying, well, I'm going to come to you, but maybe I've got a special need that you have to be prepared for, or something like that.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:16:04) - Nothing's jumping out at me from my memory. I do have to say that this research was many years ago, but nothing's jumping out at me right now. Some dreams. And this is why I thought this research was important. One of the reasons. Well, there are several reasons, but one primary one is that it did inform medical decisions some women made. But there were experiences from having the dream and as a result of the powerful dream experience that resulted in decision making, cancelling amniocentesis appointments, canceling abortion appointments, choosing to have a child or continue a pregnancy even if something went wrong like, let's say, positive for Down's syndrome or something like that. So yeah, I'd have to go back through all of them. I had missed something from doing research. If I had to do it over again. I changed some parameters because I had about 100 people respond, but I could only use 22 reports, so I'd have to go through all of them to recall. So sorry I can't share. Share that answer with you at the moment.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:17:18) - Okay, but you can share another announcing dream with us, right? Can I have a couple more?
Kimberly Mascaro (00:17:23) - I'd love to share. Okay, so and you'll see how different they are. So this was a young woman in New Mexico. She hadn't been married too long. She's Apache, and so dreaming is a part of that culture in a big way. She revealed that she had a lot of reservations and fears about being pregnant and becoming a mother, and till several announcing dreams took place. Her recollection of those really helped her settle into this new phase of life, and she just said a lot of them were mostly visual as opposed to auditory, and that she would always just see the same black haired baby boy, mostly at the age of a toddler, and he would just look at her and smile real simple. But in the dream, he'd look at her intensely smile and the sense of calm and comfort would wash over her.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:18:20) - So she said, even after waking up, though, that feeling of calm would last throughout the entire day, and she had this sense of peace again, and joy even to be part of her experience at becoming a mother. So it really changed her feelings. And she so she claimed that the fears and reservations severely diminished, and she didn't mention here that it was a surprise to see that when she birthed the baby, it had black hair and looked more like her because her husband is blonde, so that was really surprising to her. So announcing dreams can be fairly simple like that, and I do. I do have one more involving a lucid conversation between, to which I must.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:19:05) – I was going to ask you if there was ever a case where a woman got lucid in the dream and had a conversation with the baby.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:19:12) - Yes, some identified as lucid announcing dreams, others more of an out of body experience with the baby. But at night. So the definitions there can get blurred a little bit. But I will share one because this, this one's a little a little different.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:19:29) - So this pregnant woman had what turned into a lucid dream. And I'll read her report to you directly. I was early in my first trimester, which is common. Still trying to decide if having a baby at this time in my life was the right thing to do, so she was the relationship with her. Partner at the time was was not going so great, but so she wasn't sure if she was going to continue the pregnancy. In my dream, I sat with a four year old boy with dark hair. I asked him if he was my baby and he wouldn't answer me, but he did tell me he would like to be named Peter and I said no. The dream shook me when I saw him, so that that seen him is what prompted a spontaneous, lucid experience. I realized that this was the changing point in my life. I felt like this was a person speaking to me. That was the first dream, and after that one, I knew the baby was sticking around. In the second trimester, I had another dream where the little boy came again and sat by me.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:20:31) - No words were spoken, but he calmed me. Today. My son Jett is a very soothing and gentle person. I do believe that this little spirit got me on track to be his mom, even if I wouldn't name him Peter. That, I think is so is so interesting because she really she had her agenda. This this child had his agenda and she gave me permission, of course, to use the names. And yeah, pretty cool kid to this day.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:21:01) - And he was fine not being called Peter, I guess.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:21:04) - So who knows if he if you'll change his name later in life. But I thought that was really cool. Not only did and that happens a lot lucid dreams right. An image or scene. Something will kind of shake you in a way to wake you up to knowing you are dreaming, and hold that awareness that you're dreaming in the dream itself.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:21:23) - Absolutely. So let's say somebody who's pregnant is listening to this and is thinking, hey, this sounds really cool. I love to talk to my baby or have my baby talk to me, or or find out what sex it is.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:21:37) - So can a pregnant woman. It could be a dream and specific answers like that.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:21:43) - Absolutely. We can incubate a dream on anything. So how I would I would encourage women to do this and how I would advise that maybe the whole family does it. Or if you have a spouse or partner, this can be something you do alone, something you do with others. The first thing though, as you obviously know Debbie, is to keep a dream journal. If we don't tell our consciousness that dream, it is important by logging the dreams, why are they going to show up for us? So many new dreamers in fact, start logging their dreams, even if it's just a color, a flash memory, or a sensation and that starts to build, then we're telling ourselves this is important and more and more dreams may show up. So if a woman is new to this, start logging your dreams immediately best you can. And once you kind of garnish the recollection then or if you have already, then why not incubate a dream? One way to do that is to to cultivate such dreams is to do a little meditation, perhaps before bed, or if you wake up in the middle of the night, and maybe on a piece of paper or a three by five card, right? Tonight I will meet my baby or my the child I'm carrying will reveal itself to me, or I will have a strong dream that at least tells me the the sex of the child uncaring.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:23:06) - Anything like that. You can write that down, meditated on it, pray on it, ask Source or Creator to deliver that to you. Put it under your pillow. Go to sleep. If you wake up in the middle of the night, which I do sometimes just for a bathroom run, that is a great time to not lay right back down, but to sit up for a couple of minutes. Meditate. Focus on your breath. Really get that question back in. Maybe you've had a dream already, so you want to log that, but if not, you can do it again in the middle of the night or get a second piece because you can then ask, show me more about this. Tell me more about this. So whatever you're given, whatever you recall, best to bring that in by laying still when you wake up, taking a few deep breaths, let your mind stay in that liminal state for a few minutes, if you could. And then just whatever comes, write it down.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:24:01) - What else? You know how to do this? Debbie. What else did I miss? How else can we get hit? Tricks to incubate. Announcing dreams.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:24:08) - Well, I always say it's the start. The very most important thing is to believe the dream is important, right? Right. So. But if a person is really wanting to know this, they already believe it's important.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:24:20) - If you're not feeling real motivated to have a pen and paper by your bed, you could use the like a voice memo. If you have an iPhone or some type of audio recording app. Anything. Yeah. Write anything. Yeah, even a sketch with a couple bullet points.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:24:36) - Very much anything to to get that down. So you have a good recollection of it. But I would think with Pregnant Dreams my understanding is that all dreams during pregnancies are more vivid than in any other stage, or a comparatively in any other stage. Is that because of the hormones involved?
Kimberly Mascaro (00:24:56) - You know, the science behind it is is interesting.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:24:59) - There's hormonal changes, there's emotional changes too, of course, all related. And at certain times in a person's life that around big transitions and things, people often report dreams. So I think there's a kind of a combination of different factors that lead to this experience of pregnancy being a rich time for for deep and profound, memorable dreaming.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:25:27) - Absolutely. Kim, is there a final thought you'd like to leave for our audience?
Kimberly Mascaro (00:25:31) - Well, I mean, I would say announcing dreams can. And be life changing. Obviously they inform some women's medical decisions, but how fun to have any type of dream as you're growing this child in you, and it can be a story to share with the child later, not only as a bonding well, announcing dreams obviously are bonding experience during the pregnancy. Many women felt bonded before the baby was even born, but also for bonding as the child grows to remind them of of how they first made contact or how the.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:26:13) - And they beget the child to be a dreamer.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:26:16) - Yes. Yeah, what a great way to begin that practice together as a family. And you can tell children these dreams any time, because at least the first five years of a child's life, they're living in a hypnotic state anyway and and may even have some recollection. A great time to tell these stories could be on a car ride when the child is already in a very relaxed state, and the child may say things that will surprise you, shock you even.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:26:42) - Well, we are just about out of time. So Kim, how can people find out more about you and your work?
Kimberly Mascaro (00:26:48) - Thank you so much for having me and if listeners would like to contact me, my website is conscious chimaera.com and so that con see us so conscious chimaera like the the animal with many parts c h I mra.com. Or if you google my name you'll find it. So chimera is where you can find me my publication services and o in the next retreat. So HollyHock Leadership Institute on Cortez Island and British Columbia has invited me back to do another dream retreat this coming May.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:27:29) - So that's a place to do some some more, deeper personal work with me.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:27:35) - Thank you so much for being on Dream Power Radio today.
Kimberly Mascaro (00:27:39) - Thank you so much, Debbie. It was fun. Appreciate it.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:27:42) - We've been speaking about Announcing Dreams with Dr. Kimberly Mascara. I hope you’ve enjoyed today's program. If so, please hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on any future episodes. Till next time, this is Debbie Spector Weisman saying sweet dreams everybody.
Announcer (00:27:58) - You've been listening to Dream Power Radio with your host Debbie Specter Wiseman. For more information on Debbie or to sign up for her newsletter, go to Dream Power Radio.com. This has been Dream Power Radio.