Dream a Little Dream of Me

I had another gun-related dream this weekend. That makes something like four or five gun-dreams I've had since getting pregnant. Try as I might, I can't seem to think of any connection between babies and guns, so I'm not quite sure where my subconscious is trying to go with this.

Upon waking, however, I realized that in all the dreams I've had since being pregnant, I've never looked pregnant in any of them--in fact, save one, I've never been pregnant in any of them. Given the fact that I've been "showing" since the end of the first trimester, you'd think this new self-image would have seeped into the nether regions of my brain by now, but apparently not. It makes me wonder just what our subconscious pulls from when piecing together an image of ourselves for use in our dreams. Is it based on what you looked like for the majority of your life? On what you wish you looked like? How drastic of a change needs to occur to your body before your true self is mirrored in your dreams? It seems at first blush like a fairly unimportant concept to research, but I think there are ties there to some really interesting issues regarding our self-image. We all know that the way we see ourselves is rarely the way others see us; people who suffer from eating disorders and see themselves as overweight when they're really skin and bones is a prime, albeit extreme, example.

So, out of curiosity, how true to reality is the dream version of you? Has it ever changed? What triggered the change and how long did it take for your subconscious to make it? Ah, psychology--it's such a fascination to me. Wish I knew more about it...