Why Do I Get Such Strong Gut Feelings?

For some reason I have always had really strong gut feelings about things, and a lot of times I just sorta know something that's going to happen before I could have any logical way of knowing. When I was little my mother claims that I always knew the sex of an unborn child before the doctors could tell with an ultrasound. For example, when she first got pregnant with my little sister, I had told her how excited I was to have a baby sister, and she told me we didn't know if it was going to be a sister or not, we would just have to wait and see, but I told her "No, its a girl." And bam, it was a girl. My mom has dreams about things that actually happen later on, but she says she had never had one of those dreams until she got pregnant with me. When my stepmom got pregnant with my youngest sister, my dad had called me and told me he wanted me to come over, but he didn't tell me why. On my way to his house it just hit me, "My stepmom is pregnant, and this time its going to be a girl." My grandpa claims he has also had this ability all throughout his life, he has told me stories similar to what I just told you. We both also get a "dark cloud" kind of feeling when something bad is about to happen. We do not have visions of any sort, things just come to us. We just know. What is strange to me is my mothers dreams. She said the first dream she had of the sort was when she was around half way through her pregnancy with me, and in this dream she was bouncing a baby with blue eyes and curly blonde hair on her knee, and I turned out to look exactly like the child in her dream. Another dream she has had that I remember her talking about was just a few years ago. She dreamed that the IRS had made a mistake on our taxes, amd we recieved a check for $1,000. A few weeks later, we check the mail, and there it is. The exact check she dreamed of. My grandpa and I do not have these kinds of dreams, we get strong gut feelings while we are awake. Its just strange that my mom didn't start having those dreams until she got pregnant with me. When I was little I always had a strong sense that I was different in some way, I was always looking for some hidden super power that I hadn't discovered yet. My grandpa also says he felt the same way when he was younger. I'm not really sure what this is or how we came to have this ability.