In the interpretation of dreams, Birth is among the recurring images that traditional dream-books and modern depth psychology have alike tried to read. It is commonly interpreted as new beginnings, a fresh project, idea, or aspect of the self emerging.
Common readings
Birth is commonly read as the arrival of something new in the dreamer's life, a project, a relationship or a newly surfacing side of the self.
The reading of dream symbols has a long documented history, from the Oneirocritica of Artemidorus in the second century to Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) and the archetypal psychology of C. G. Jung. Such meanings are interpretive conventions of those traditions, offered here as ways the image has been understood rather than as fixed or established fact; in practice a symbol takes much of its sense from the individual dreamer and the setting of the dream.
What changes the reading
Interpreters distinguish giving birth in a dream, watching a birth and being newly born oneself, and they ask what stage the dream shows, labour, arrival or the first sight of the child. For a dreamer who is actually expecting a child the image is usually read first as ordinary anticipation, vivid pregnancy dreams being well documented, and only after that as symbol. When nothing in waking life is literally being born, the birth is commonly taken to announce something beginning that will need tending before it can stand on its own.