Humans share a critical common point with all living beings on the planet, just like a frog, a cat or a goldfish: Our birth! The day when we physically entered the history of our parents. There is something about writing about your entry into the world that feels right; it is, after all, the starting point! Perhaps this is an opportunity to reflect on our incredible journey, from embryo to person.
In this post, we’ll look back at some of the incredible things that happened on the day you were born and give you some guidelines to tell your story.
Do you remember the day you were born? Of course not – you were too busy entering into the world! But your parents likely remember it like it was yesterday.
Source for getting the details about your birth:
- Tap into your memories for any images or sounds coming back when travelling in time.
- As mentioned above, interviews with your parents were this event was most likely a memorable moment for them.
- With interviews over your family members, just like your aunts, uncles, grandparents, brothers or sisters. They will give you access to some back stories from before, during and after your birth.
- Interviews with your godfather and/or godmother, from the day they were nominated, they sure were following and expecting you.
- Interviews with those who were there. Like friends, neighbours or the medical staff (true, that is a long shot).
- Review your medical records, looking for the earliest entries in them.
- Did your mom maintain any diaries?
- Search for any items, pictures or cards related to your birth.
Some questions to help you build and write your story:
- What were your parents’ lives like before you were born? Were they married, did they have other kids, etc.?
- How did they meet and fall in love?
- How did your parents feel about having a child? Were they excited, or did they feel like it was something they had to do?
- What was your mom’s pregnancy like while carrying you?
- Was your mom in labour on your own? Were you before or after your due date?
- How did the delivery go? Were there any complications, or did everything go smoothly?
- What was the hospital like – was it busy or calm, did your parents have to wait long for you to be born, etc.?
- Who was present? Was your father allowed in the delivery room?
- Where and at what time did you enter this world?
- What was your weight and height at birth?
- How did your parents feel when they first saw you – were they happy, overwhelmed, scared, etc.?
- What was the first thing your parents said to you after you were born – and what do you remember about that conversation?
- Did you stay long at the hospital after your birth?
- What was the impact on the family once you came home?
- How was the adaptation at home with the siblings, if any?
If you plan to write your biography, check this post about Drawing your timeline and adding worthy events into it.
A fun exercise to define your actual beginning, when were you procreated?
It’s silly, but with the lack of detail on very personal facts, you can always make some assumptions to bring a little back story by reversing your date of birth. So, moving 280 days back from your birthday, what was the current big event around this date, give or take some days? Was it close to Valentine’s day, a birthday, or a national celebration?
You might need to adjust if you were premature or overdue with the 280 days.
You can find some tools on the internet to help you make this calculation, like https://www.alarmdaddy.com/calculators/date/count