Because who needs sleep, right?

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Getting a good night’s sleep is a valuable prize on its own. And when it comes with dreams of riding a narwhal through puffy clouds made of marshmallows? Even better. But some people find that, when they’re pregnant, vivid dreams come far too often—and they’re far too weird.

Apparently Cardi B, who is expecting her first child in July, is experiencing some particularly odd pregnancy dreams. “Ok soooo one thing i don’t like about pregnancy is these weird, crazy, spooky dreams i be having,” she tweeted on Saturday. “I hate them.” Cardi said they even wake her up at night.

“Everything is too vivid,” she said in another tweet. “Sex dreams, nightmares, good dreams.”

Sure, a totally bizarre dream can be fun once in a while. But when you’re consistently having weird, intense, or scary dreams during pregnancy it can be more than a little freaky—it can be downright terrifying. So, what causes these dreams? It turns out there are some pretty reasonable explanations.

Obviously, there’s a lot going on in your body when you’re pregnant—and that can affect your dreams, too.
Intense, vivid pregnancy dreams are a “commonly observed phenomenon,” Tamar Gur, M.D., Ph.D., a women’s health expert and reproductive psychiatrist at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, tells SELF.

Although researchers don’t fully understand why it happens, they do have some theories, mostly involving the change in hormones you experience when pregnant. Specifically, the increase in progesterone and estrogen can affect the REM state (the type of sleep when you have rapid eye movements and more dreaming), board-certified sleep medicine doctor and neurologist W. Christopher Winter, M.D., of Charlottesville Neurology and Sleep Medicine, and author of the book, The Sleep Solution: Why Your Sleep is Broken and How to Fix It, tells SELF.

“Hormonal fluctuations can really affect the staging and overall quality of your sleep,” he says. Those fluctuations can cause you to wake up more often during the night and increase your overall levels of stress, the American Pregnancy Association says, which can lead to more frequent or more intense dreams.

If you tend to eat right before bed, it also may have an impact on your dreams, Kimberly Fenn, Ph.D., director of the Sleep and Learning Lab at Michigan State University, tells SELF. Some research suggests that many people report having vivid dreams if they eat right before bed, especially if they eat specific foods that may cause digestion issues, according to the National Sleep Foundation.

There’s a psychological explanation as well: “Dreams can be a reflection of your waking state,” Dr. Gur says, meaning that our minds tend to work through stressful or emotional situations while we’re asleep in cryptic ways. And some people have noticed that pregnancy dreams tend to follow some specific patterns, many of which have to do with the pregnancy itself, delivery, or breastfeeding.

Pregnancy, understandably, comes with a lot of stress, and your mind may be dealing with it via dreams. So, if you have a dream where you leave your baby in a dressing room at Target, for instance, it might just be a reflection of you having (very normal) worries or uncertainty about motherhood.
Pregnancy dreams are usually pretty harmless, but there are a few things to keep on your radar.
Thanks to the hormonal and physical changes you’re going through, you’re at a higher risk for developing acid reflux (which is often triggered laying down at night after eating) or sleep apnea (which causes your breathing to repeatedly stop and start during the night).

If you’re having trouble breathing during the night, that experience may actually get incorporated into your dreams as a panicky feeling or even one where you can’t breathe, Dr. Winter explains. So if you find that you’re regularly having dreams where you’re drowning, lost, or being chased or attacked, and your partner says you’ve suddenly been snoring a lot, those could be signs that you’re experiencing sleep apnea during your pregnancy, he adds.

Although it may be no big deal to have a bizarre dream every once in a while, consistently having them isn’t necessarily enjoyable. If you’re frequently having violent, scary nightmares that wake you up from sleep several times a night or you’re feeling extra jumpy, claustrophobic, or having intrusive thoughts about past traumas when you’re awake, it’s probably time to see a mental health professional, Dr. Gur says.

“It might be a sign that you have something more significant going on,” she says. If your vivid dreams are interfering with your ability to get a good night’s sleep—either because you don’t want to fall asleep or because they regularly wake you up—it’s worth talking to a doctor or therapist.

In general, though, remember that weird, vivid dreams like these are completely normal during pregnancy, Dr. Gur notes.

SELF does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Any information published on this website or by this brand is not intended as a substitute for medical advice, and you should not take any action before consulting with a healthcare professional.