TikTok is chock full of cute baby videos, perhaps the only ones that can rival cat videos in terms of sheer quantity. But despite the amount of hilarious baby videos on the app, I’ll bet you’ve never seen a baby having a nightmare before.
A video posted to TikTok by user @des1403 shows her newborn baby waking up from an apparent nightmare. I didn’t even know it was possible for babies to have nightmares but there’s no other way to explain how the newborn jolts awake, like he just saw the most terrifying thing you could imagine. It’s funny to watch but was probably a terrifying experience for the baby. Des adds to the hilarity with a witty caption, “POV: dreaming you’ll have dad’s hairline.”
The video has received over 10 million views and 2.3 million likes in less than a week with viewers finding the video hilarious – one comment read, ‘Literal tears are rolling down my face & my stomach hurts’. Others wanted to send the video to their significant others but didn’t want to touch a nerve, ‘I want to send this to my man but don’t want to hurt his feelings’.
One commenter asked a pretty valid question, ‘I’ve always wondered how do babies have bad dreams?! What are they dreaming about?’ That got me thinking – is it even possible for a baby to have a nightmare? So obviously I had to look into this very pressing matter immediately.
Do babies have nightmares?
According to smartsleepcoach.com, babies typically have their first nightmare between 1.5 and 2 years old although it can happen as early as six months old. As for newborns, the honest answer is that we simply don’t know. It’s not like you can ask a baby if they just had a nightmare so there really isn’t a way to confirm.
Although newborns spend half of their sleep in REM (the part of sleep where we dream) it’s believed that it serves a different purpose. Happiestbaby.com reports that neuroscientists have often theorized about the REM cycle during a child’s earliest month – they claim that during this phase of sleep the brain is developing pathways, connections, and learning language.
If babies did have dreams it would be difficult to even imagine what they would be about. The baby wouldn’t be able to articulate its experiences to an adult. It’s hard to imagine a baby would dream in the same way we do as they simply haven’t had the life experience yet.
Anyway, back to Des and her baby. One viewer asked for a dad hairline reveal and she was happy to oblige. To all the men out there who stress about hair loss may we always remember, it ain’t that bad. It’s certainly not worth losing any sleep over for that matter. I say let’s embrace the baldness no matter what.