When I dream, does it counted as a deep sleep?

I frequently have dreams right up the moment I wake up; how is that possible if we only dream in the deepest sleep?

• A number of things I've seen (including ) say that dreams only occur during the deepest of five stages of sleep (REM sleep). But... I frequently dream right up until the moment of waking; in fact, I tend to realize I'm dreaming by how my dream changes as I start to wake up (things get blurry and dark, more surreal, in the dream, it'll start making less sense: for example, I once realized I was dreaming when an away team from the Enterprise D showed up in an otherwise perfectly coherent dream set in medieval France... soon after everyone was talking really slowly and then the world went dark, I couldn't keep my eyes open [in the dream]... and then I woke up.) So... how does that track? Am I really abnormal or do other people have similar experiences?

• Answer:

  Actually, dreams happen in all stages of sleep.  I looked this up a couple of months ago when my insomnia was bad enough that I was never sleeping for 90 consecutive minutes.  (Accounts said REM sleep starts about 90 minutes into the sleep cycle.)  It's stated that dreams during REM sleep tend to be the most vivid and memorable.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream