What memories of your birth did your parents pass onto you that have lingered?

My mother and father made a leisurely late-morning trip to the hospital. By the time of their arrival, my mother says she remembered being wheeled into the delivery room fully clothed, with her shoes on her stomach.

An uneventful delivery, however, except for the date…Dec. 31.

I was also a lunchtime arrival.

They argued over what to name me. I got names a third name. I changed my name as an adult.

Just the fact that it was the day that ruined my mother’s life forever. Or whatever. All I know is that I was her fourth pregnancy and the first she (sort of) willingly kept. Apparently didn’t have time to abort before my dad’s super-Catholic mother found out about it.

I was born at 10:20 a.m. on Dec. 26. My father was traveling and my mother went into labor Christmas night around midnight and had to dig her car out of the snow and drive herself to the hospital. I was a lot of work even before I was born. I was also, apparently, very cute and my mother tells of several strangers in her travels with me the first 6 months of my life, that wanted to adopt me.

Obviously I was not up for re-homing but my mother was flattered. lol

The main story that was told about my birth was that I “broke up a good Bridge game.”

Coloma and I share the same birthday. Mom always told me that I let her get through the Christmas dinner and some sleep before showing up first thing in the morning. It was also the first time that she stayed in the hospital a couple of days after giving birth and how wonderful it was.

Mom became friends with her hospital roommate. Almost 50 years later, the two of them are still in touch. I’ve only met the friend’s daughter who shares the same birthday once, but it feels as if I know her life story.

Nothing.

@Pied_Pfeffer Yes, we must share a rockin’ Capricornian birthday bash for all us Dec. “kids.” :-)

My father was away at sea on the U.S.S. West Virginia at the time. My grandmother helped my mom through the whole process. Fortunately, my dad was NOT with the ship when it went down at Pearl Harbor and lies there to this day.

I was born so close to midnight that my mum wasn’t entirely sure when my birthday was, without double-checking with the midwife.

@ragingloli Ah yes, that’ll be right.

My mother was completely unprepared for labor. She went through it with no medication, and then was knocked out for the actual birth. She didn’t know if she had had a baby when she woke up. I was altogether somewhere else.
So, so much better today, if you can manage to keep out of the medicated delivery world.

I was free of charge. My mom told the doctor he didn’t know how to deliver girls because she already had 3 boys. He told her if she had a girl, it would be free of charge. She got a bill from him that said “no charge” after I was born. I wish she had kept it.

@chyna That is so cute!

Although I was her second child, my Mother didn’t recognize the signs. Her mother was visiting at the time, and when she found my Mom grunting on the toilet, she said no, get to the hospital now. It was almost too late. Mom was lying on the lawn outside the hospital, and they put her on the gurney just a few seconds before I came out.

My mother told my father that it was time, so he proceeded to clean the kitchen before taking her to the hospital.
It took 45 minutes for me to be born, after her water broke.
The doctor said “Uh oh.” and told my mom to stop pushing. Apparently the chord was wrapped around my neck, but it was loose, and not harming me.
Then mom cried because I was so small, and she thought something was wrong with me. She later found out there was a hole in her placenta, so I wasn’t getting all of the nutrition I needed. So, I was a really small baby.

Also, the other day, when my niece was being born, my brother was holding his fiances leg up, and he dropped it once the baby came out. Haha, He’s very proud of himself, for cutting the cord.

I was told it was one of the worse winters to hit our area, in the UK. And that my father was out getting drunk! That kind of sums up my rocky start!!

Several stories. The one that popped in my head first was my Father shaking the doctors hand so hard the doctor was worried he broke it.

I was told about how the morning was snowy and really quiet while my mom was on the way to the hospital. It was about seven am when I was born, so I wonder how came I hate getting up early so much haha.

I was born at 3:33 on the 3rd

I was the only time convenient birth of the four of us because I was induced. My mom got induced at ten in the morning and I was delivered at 2:30. All the other kids in the family came in the small hours of the morning.

Also, while I was being born, my dad took the afternoon off to pick my older brother and sister up from school, and then they went and bought the family’s first TV (this was 1955). My older brother and sister say this is why my birth was memorable.

my mother named my brother after my father even though my father did not want his son named after him. Well when I was born my mother was asleep when he got to see me and so he asked if she named me yet and when they responded that she didn’t he said he wanted to name me which he did… He named me after her as revenge for naming my older brother after him.

Very painful and very fast. It was lucky I was born in the hospital and not the car. My mom had eaten a huge meal out at a nice restaurant. My dad wanted her to feel better since she had had some false labor a few days before, and was getting sick and tired of being pregnant, so he took her out for a nice evening. Also, it was freezing cold that night. January baby.

I was born at 1:37 or 1:47 AM, which I say explains why I’m nocturnal. My mother was knocked out just before my birth, and was afraid she’d suffocate me if she tried to breastfeed me. Big boobs run in the family. ~

My parents tossed a coin to see whether they would let me hatch, or have a very small omelet. ;-)

My dad loves to tell people that, because of a lack of rooms available at the hospital when my mum went into labour with me, I was born in the room that they keep all the pee samples!

I know my entire birth story, and it’s fascinating, but I’ll try to summarize:

My mother wanted to have a home-birth, so she contacted a midwife. When the contractions started, the midwife came over, checked her, said it would be quite a while, and took off to run errands. Labor progressed until my mom knew she was getting close to transition, so she called the midwife back. The midwife got stuck in traffic and my dad had to deliver me. Mom likes to remind me that I made her miss I Love Lucy that day.

She started hemorrhaging and had to go to the ER. The ER claimed I was contaminated from home-birth and wanted to quarantine me for two weeks, but my parents were having none of that, so they let me go home with a friend of a friend who had a baby and was still nursing. She kept me for two days, I think, until my mom was able to go home.

Mom calls me with this story every year on my birthday, and she sometimes tells it like it’s happening right now. The phone calls start the night before when “she is feeling the first little twinges.” The next day, I get several more like, “I know I’m really in labor now, but we’re just hanging out playing Skip-Bo” and “Your daddy and Jane are picking up lunch, but I’m not really hungry at this point,” until she finally calls and tells me, “This time, 33 (or whatever) years ago, I’m starting to push but the midwife still isn’t here, so your daddy has to keep me calm and help me deliver you…”

Other people might get tired of hearing it, but I think it’s neat that she does that every year.

I was a scheduled C-section, put Mom under, snip, snap, snurr…Here’s your son, sir!

My pet goose turned 14 in July. Everybody sing now…..Hatchin’ my baaaaby…... lol

Cheers folks, good stuff!

My mother loves to tell me that the doctors and nurses advised her to bring something to read to the delivery room. They said there might be breaks in labor and reading would keep her from being bored, or maybe distract her from the pain?? I’m not sure which. But by the time she got to the hospital, around 3:30 in the afternoon she felt like she’d be lucky if she got to the delivery room in time! She thought I might be born in the elevator. I was in a hurry to get born. She always laughs to herself when she tells me the story saying that it would have had to have been a short story and not a novel if she brought something to read.

The other part of the story is that the obstetrician, who had already delivered 3 girls to my parents, told my Mom, “I’ll put my glasses on when I go out to tell him, (my father,that is), he can’t hit a man with his glasses on!”

Luckily the next one was a boy.

Had I been a boy, my name would be Doug.

@Pied_Pfeffer I don’t know what name my parents had planned for a boy. I almost got called Amy. My brother is James. So maybe that would have been my name if I were a boy. My brother’s middle name is the name of my Mom’s obstetrician. No lies!

@Pied_Pfeffer My mom says I would have been Andreas if I were a boy, but she did not name me the name she wanted most, and my sister the family basically called my mom crazy for wanting the name she preferred. So basically my mom never really got her way on names.

@JLeslie I told my ex MIL the names I picked out, a gag to get her snooty goat lol

Beulah Lou for a girl and Brooke Trout for a boy. She almost keeled over. Watching her try to not look too shocked and disapproving was priceless. haha

@Coloma We did wind up with a cat named Andreas.

@Earthgirl I had a 36 hour labor myself. In between bouts of pain, I read the entirety of a very funny nonfiction book called “Why Do Men Have Nipples?” and my husband read all of “Around the World in 80 Days” – something he’d always wanted to read but never got around to. Labor is a great time to catch up on your reading.

My mum wanted to call me Megan and my dad wanted to call me Leanna, my dad kind of won but the dropped the “a” at the end. It took my mum a long time to decide on the spelling of my name and their are biorthday/christmas cards to various family members where my mum has signed my name a number of ways (Leigh-Anne, Leeanne, Lee Anne). They finally settled on Leanne which seems much simpler than the others.

@Seek_Kolinahr Well, I’m glad somebody got some reading in, lol. I guess it was good advice but my mother ended up not needing to wait around like you. Why do men have nipples???
Imagine a delivery so long that you could read War and Peace! It would be funny to make a reading list for the labor room with topical books to suit the mood. Personally I am having a hard time imagining that I would be in the mood for humor. Did it really make you laugh outloud or was it one of those, I’m laughing inside my head, really, moments?

@Earthgirl The book’s whole title is “Why Do Men Have Nipples? Hundreds of Questions You’d Only Ask Your Doctor After Your Third Martini” It’s co-written by Billy Goldberg, MD, and Mark Leyener, a comedian. There’s a second book, too, called “Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex?” Some of the bits are laugh-out-loud hilarious (mostly the AIM transcripts between the writers)

I was able to read it during labor because most of the Q&As are about a page and a half long. Read between contractions.

And men have nipples because we all start off in the womb as female until the Y chromosome kicks in. It’s just leftover DNA code from evolution.

@Seek_Kolinahr thanks for the explanation. That makes so much sense but it’s amazing when you think about it. Then you wonder why you never thought of the question yourself!