no dreams until the morning

Aren't you supposed to enter REM sleep within an hour after you fall asleep? I wake up once or twice during the night and am not having dreams, or any sensation of having had been dreaming. Like I woke up at 4, then 7 this morning and no dreams. Then I woke up at 9:30 and had been having a lengthy and detailed dream. This has been happening every night.... and has been something that regularly happens for the past few years... no dreams until the morning. Is this normal?

Same thing happens for me.

No, you usually don't REM until the end of the night. You first go into deep sleep.

Most REM cycles that occurs in the first few hours of sleep are short and foggy, if present at all. As ninja said, you mostly go into deep sleep--which you sorta dream, but it's more thoughts and images, rather than a fluid dream.

If you sleep 8 hours, 50% of REM sleep occurs in the last 2 hours.