Sageous, interesting notion of re-entering a dream in order to recall, I'll have to try that sometime.

mimi: yes, I get this all the time. I very frequently get the notion that I've been away on adventures *all night long* and only am able to recall the latest or the most memorable of the moments. On those nights where I actually do arouse on the inter-sleep-cycle wakings enough to recall and find the will to record, I can wrack up an amazing number of dreams/scenes in a single night, 16+ in some cases (usually around 4 dreams per waking, and 4 wakings).

When I do mental journaling (which I do more and more in order to minimize sleep disturbances), where I try to maintain a growing list of all the dreams of the night until morning (and refresh the list on each waking), sometimes I'll forget the actual dreams from the earlier cycles but remember how many there were. And, I remember that did experience them, I just don't recall the actual experience.

I find mental journaling is a great way to build recall, and the more I do it the more successful I am more often at remembering even the earliest dreams. Yes it risks losing the earlier ones, but I find that I prefer to miss a few early ones if it means my night is more restful, and in any case the middle/late dreams are usually still nicely detailed.