I realize she was on pain meds--and the dream was pleasant for the most part.  When she was talking to her parents in the kitchen, I don't understand why Gene was mopping up blood. Also, why was her mother holding a bandage to a bleeding afro-american man sitting at the table?  I don't get the symbolism--anyone else out there have an opinion?

The only one I could take a stab at is the silk worm. 

She holds it for a second and then gets big eyes and closes her hand around it.  Could she be seeking to control her children with a tight grip or she could be looking to keep herself young, innocent, and not fully developed to fly away?   That  would play into the episode “Shoot” where after her dream of re-establishing modeling is crushed she goes outside to shoot down the pigeons

I think the dream with the catepillar represents Betty's idea that everything should be perfect, but it's not.  She has said a couple of times that she wants everything to be perfect when the baby arrives.  But she knows Don is not a faithful or loving husband and she is not happy with being a house wife.  When she is labor, she screams, "Where's Don?  He's never where you expect him to be . . . I'm just a housewife."  I think the dream represents these feelings.  In the catepillar dream, she is walking down a suburban street, looking beautiful, the sun is shining, and she holds a catepillar at the beginning of its life.  Everything is new and beautiful.  But then she suffocates it.  Maybe going back on her thoughts of aborting the baby?

I am also having trouble understanding the dream with her parents.   I think it may also represent Betty's adverse feelings of being a housewife.  I think she feels she was never self-sufficient.  She says "I left my lunch pail on the bus.  And I am having a baby."  I think this indicates that she still feels like a child.  She never grew up because she met Don too young.  Her Dad tells her "You are a housecat, you are very important."  But I do not believe her Dad ever felt that Betty was important, based upon his comments to Sally before he died (basically that Sally can become someone, not like her mother).  But I cannot understand why he is mopping up blood or why there is an injured/dead man at the kitchen table?  I am going back to when her mom is holding a bloody wash cloth and says, "see what happens when you speak up?"  Maybe this dream shows Betty's thoughts that despite that she hates being a housewife, she has to just shut up and take it.

I am new to this forum.  Very interesting discussions.  Glad to be here.

The African American man was Medgar Evers, who Miss Farrell said Sally was asking questions about.  He was killed for speaking up about civil rights.  I was wondering if Betty's labor was much worse and she nearly died.  She asked her parents if she was dying.  But her recovery was too fast, so it can't be that.

I took the symbolism of the caterpillar as indicating a pending metamorphosis - Betty's arc throughout has struck me as that of a woman seeking some kind of transformation in the form of having more control of her life, more power over her destiny, even if she has to create some drastic circumstances to do so.   The fate of the caterpillar is unclear - did Betty crush it?  We don't know -it's fate, like her metamorphosis, is in her hands.

In some respects, Betty almost seems to be the anti-Peggy.  Peggy's transformation is occurring because she's realizing her potential through her work - in a traditionally a man's world.  While Betty had a career as a model, perhaps her true feeling toward her life as a model and later as a housewife, was captured in Gene's words in her dream, "You're a house cat, you're very important and you have little to do."  Perhaps this sense of wanting to assert herself, to be important and have a LOT to do, is what leads her to dismiss Carla, as revealed at the end of the episode.

This dream sequence struck me as similar to some of those in "The Sopranos" in that the events of the dream reveal to the character something they know or suspect but have trouble coming to grips with (I'm thinking here of the talking fish that told Tony about the betrayal of Big Pussy).  In this dream, Betty's mother refers to Medgar Evers as an example of the consequences of being too assertive.  My guess is Betty has internalized this from her mother and therein lies the difference between her parents that she seems to be struggling to reconcile within herself.   Gene repeatedly told Sally that she could become whatever she wanted "despite what she (Betty) tells you" - I can picture that same conversation taking place between Gene and a young Betty about her mother. Gene also seems critical of Betty for not living up to her potential when he gives her the folder with "the arrangements" by saying "If you only knew what were truly possible!".  So Betty seems to have been pulled between two poles - the traditional role of a woman who finds her value as an object of beauty, important, but with little to do except be pretty, staying quiet and not upsetting the status quo, which is reinforced by her mother, and that of a father who seemed to encourage her that there was a bigger world out there.

The caterpillar then may signal Betty believes that the new child offers an opportunity for metamorphosis in the same way the prison guard did when he declared to Don that his new son would make him a better man.

Then again, it is only a tv show....

But WHAT a show it IS.

The scene somewhat resembles descriptions of "Near death experience".  I think perhaps it suggests a transition in Betty's life. 

During her delivery she knew she was completely powerless, Her trusted Dr. was celebrating elsewhere.  The nurse is harsh and unsympathetic, when she said she could not push anymore she was told "you do it or we will do it for you".  That delivery that must have lasted a full 36 hours and in all she experienced, the pain, the drugs, the dreams,  that is her metamorphosis.  She will come to understand that she needs to take more control of her life, that to be beautiful and taken care of is not enough.  Being seen as a house cat with little do is insulting and controlling,

I really see Betty as growing and evolving into a more assertive woman, taking more responsibility for what she really wants for herself, rather than limiting herself to a  role she assumed because it was expected of her.

Peggy probably knew very early that the role her parents, church and society expected of her was not the way she would choose.  We have  watched her    struggles to define and reach her goals.  Betty, I think is just beginning to reach that point in her life.  Perhaps she does not yet know what he wants, she is just beginning to understand what she does not want.

Yes, j-59 it is only a TV show, but I was there, and I felt that current of change for women, and I saw a lot of the results, both the good and the bad. 

Yeah, WHAT a show!

One scene I keep thinking about. 

Don is sitting on Betty's bed in the hospital room.  She is holding the baby.  Then the camera shifts and we see only Betty reflected in a mirror.  That scene seemed pretty profound to me, and yet I am a bit puzzled.  I don't see it as a separation  between Don and Betty.  My thought is that we will see Betty more as an individual, standing more on her own...

Any ideas?