Do Infants Dream of Electric Milk Bottles?

Sit­ting in bed, in the silver-blue glow of my lap­top, watch­ing my son sleep, sooth­ing him first with sound when he wakes. Inter­est­ingly, more than half the time he wakes with a vio­lent start, and starts cry­ing imme­di­ately — before even open­ing his eyes. So I have to ask — is he hav­ing night­mares? Or is he sim­ply hyper­sen­si­tive to his sit­u­a­tion– in the crib, not in the bed, and alone, no bod­ies next to him? I can’t decide. I know that he’s upset before he’s fully con­scious. It makes me sad to think that a child of a mere 8 months could have any­thing in his head other than warm, fuzzy, liq­uid, fleshy happiness.