INTERPRETATION
When you set out to interpret a dream, always look for a problem or question. It’s usually near the beginning of a dream. Then look at the dream problem as a metaphor for a situation in your life.
Your dream problem is what to do with the tired baby. You solve this straight away by making her comfortable so she can sleep. So this appears, at first glance, to be about allowing time and space for rest and recovery in an area of your life.
Ah, but what’s that we see next in your dream? That “nice cosy place” was potentially suffocating, choking and lacking in warmth. And this suffocating preoccupation was stopping you from getting something you really wanted – that cup of coffee.
So the problem is that a comfortable situation arranged for rest and recovery has become potentially suffocating, choking and lacking in warmth, and is stopping you from getting something you really want.
Which situation, in your waking life, does this describe?
In the dream, you then realised the baby was probably stuck in that “nice cosy place”. But you decided she was “fairly comfortable” and so you left her there. Now that you know which waking life situation this dream reflects, can you see that you might have settled for “fairly comfortable” and “left” it at that?
Is this what you have done, settled for “fairly comfortable” and zoned out (gone back to sleep) to it?
When someone wakes up in a dream, it generally represents an awakening – something you are newly aware of, something that has moved into your conscious mind. When someone goes to sleep in a dream, it can represent a return to unconsciousness, forgetting what you have learned, losing awareness. Your dream suggests that you’ve had a brief awakening, an insight into how suffocating, choking and lacking in warmth a certain “nice cosy situation” in your life really makes you feel, only to let that insight slide into oblivion. That “nice cosy situation” must be very enticing to make you bury feelings of suffocation and being stuck.
Are you stuck in a comfort zone – a situation that once was genuinely comfortable but that has now become stifling? Why do you fear stepping out, waking up, growing bigger than the two litre bottle space you’ve limited yourself too?
There are many nurturing symbols or references in your dream: nursing the baby, milk, milk up the level of her chest (chest is where nursing breasts are situated), milk bottle (breast, feeding bottle?). But this baby is definitely over-nurtured, potentially drowning, suffocating and choking on too much milk!
The chest also houses the lungs and breathing mechanism. The dream baby is in milk right up to her chest, suggesting too much nurturing is depriving her of breathing space. How much breathing space do you feel you have in your waking life?
You describe the dream milk bottle as a 2 litre bottle. Whenever a number is mentioned in a dream, it’s usually significant. Have you been in a “nice cosy place” for 2 years, or 2 months or in some way connected with the number 2?
At the end of the dream you wondered how you would get the baby out of the bottle again. This sounds like getting a baby ‘off’ the bottle, weaning a bottle-fed child off the bottle. Were you weaned off the bottle when you were 2 years old, or did you wean your children (off a bottle) at age 2? Does the situation you are in today feel a bit like being addicted to the bottle? (Or have you taken comfort in alcohol?) Are you fearful of ‘weaning’ yourself from that “nice cosy place”?
Dreams love plays on words. Have you been “bottling” something up, feeding off a feeling, enjoying the comfort this brings while suffocating on it at the same time?
In the dream, you find yourself in a tourist area and you wanted to sit down and have a coffee, but couldn’t because you were preoccupied with all the nurturing and the comfort zone. Tourists visit new and exciting places, away from the comfortable places they know. The interpretation of this part of your dream is that some part of you really does want to spend time away from your comfort zone, nurturing yourself in different ways (shown in the dream as coffee instead of milk), but feels unable to do so.
Coffee is an adult’s drink. In your dream, milk is portrayed as a baby’s drink. So that “nice cosy” comfort zone has perhaps kept you stunted, as a child, and now it is time to grow and explore new personal territory, to nurture yourself in more grown-up or adult ways.
I’m sure this is ringing bells for you!
A baby in a dream often represents something new in your life. What age would you say your dream baby was? If you answered, for example, three months old, then ask yourself what new thing/approach began in your life three months ago. Is this when you began nurturing yourself in ultra-comfort zone at the expense of exploring new territory and growing? Or is this one of many ‘new beginnings’ that you have introduced into your comfort zone, one that you will, in fact, limit by “leaving it there”?
The baby was you, so this is also your inner child. Have you been too focussed on nurturing your inner child to pay attention to your inner teenager, inner young adult, inner and outer you? Have you become ‘stuck’ in your focus? Are you forgetting that the purpose of nurturing your inner child is to free yourself, as an adult, to move forward with your life?
You are limiting your potential, and probably not achieving your desires, by suffocating in a comfort zone instead of stepping out into new territory to grow.
DREAM ALCHEMY PRACTICE
Visualisation:
Visualise the bottleneck widening as you lift ‘baby you’ from the milk, hug her, carry her into a beautiful garden, and then gently settle her in the shade of a tree. Feel her relief as she fills her lungs with fresh air and feels the warmth of the sun on her skin. Visualise her quickly growing into the beautiful adult that you now are, and visualise her opening the garden gate by the tree and finding herself in that tourist place, excited about sitting down and having that cup of coffee. Share her excitement that her wonderful adventure has truly begun.
How often to do this:
Do this visualisation 20 times a day for a week, ten times a day for the second week and twice a day for the next month.
How does this work?
This practice ensures that change occurs for you in the best possible way – a positive healing transformation. Your dream expressed your waking life situation using dream language – the language of your unconscious mind. By reliving the dream with changes, or by transforming one of the dream symbols (or by reliving and intensifying the dream in the case of a dream with a positive ending) you are using vision and feeling to reprogram your unconscious beliefs.
Jane Teresa Anderson
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