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Original poster

How was I born on the wrong day?

370 replies

PossiblyDreaming · 06/03/2022 23:54

I’ve always thought I was born on a Sunday which always made me feel very smug as a child whenever I saw that nursery rhyme that goes “Monday’s child is fair of face” etc until it gets to Sunday’s child and says how much better kids born on a Sunday are.

Anyway, I was recently filling out some online form where I had to put in my date of birth and it came up on a calendar showing that actually I was born on a Monday. I double checked it with another calendar and, yes, I was definitely born on a Monday. I didn’t think much of it but text my mum to tell her as I thought it was mildly amusing that she’s forgotten when I was born.

Except my mum is 100% adamant that I was born on a Sunday. She remembers it specifically as she made my dad run to the church to drag my grandparents out so that they could watch my brother while he drove her to hospital. My grandparents only ever went to church on a Sunday and my dad was a teacher so if it had been a weekday he wouldn’t have been at home when my mum went into labour. It was mid October so wouldn’t have been a bank holiday. It wasn’t a long labour, I was born a couple of hours later so it wasn’t like my mum was labouring overnight and I was born the next day or anything.

My mum is 70 and fully compos mentis but she can’t get my dad or her parents to corroborate as they’re dead. She is absolutely adamant that I was born on Sunday and now thinks that my birthday was recorded incorrectly and it’s actually the day before the day that I’ve celebrated all my life 😂. I’ve got the original copy of my birth certificate and it says the date that I’ve always thought it was.

I know it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things but it’s really odd. Is there any really obvious way that I’m missing that might confirm either way? Do I now celebrate my birthday the day before even though all my public records show it as being the next day?

OP posts:
MimiDaisy11 · 07/03/2022 07:24

You mentioned a few times that your mum is of sound mind but memories are strange things and people can easily have false ones or at least ones that aren’t completely accurate. I’m sure we all have had people recall stories that we remember differently.

It’s also possible there was a mistake but it’s weird no one noticed it. If Sunday church was part of the story surely that would be in your father and grandparents minds too so it’s weird no one noticed. You’d think a few eyes would have looked over the birth certificate before it was put away.

It was early October so not a half term or bank holiday. Grandparents could have been at a funeral but it wouldn’t explain why my dad wasn’t at work
Wouldn’t he have left work or not gone in because your mother was due or over due?

DoNotTouchTheWater · 07/03/2022 07:25

I’d assume your mum went into labour and had to go to the hospital on the Sunday and the exact details of how the grandparents were fetched to look after your brother got a bit muddled.

MimiDaisy11 · 07/03/2022 07:27

I do think though that if the birth certificate is the date you’ve been celebrating then it’s likely true as if no one paid attention to the certificate wouldn’t you have been celebrating the date before all this time?

ArnoldBee · 07/03/2022 07:29

My Mum spent 55 years being born at the wrong hospital which wouldn't have been so odd for most people except my grandmother worked there!

MRex · 07/03/2022 07:29

The most likely explanations are that she had you just after midnight, or that you checked an online calendar that was incorrect on the day of the week.

oohyoudevilyou · 07/03/2022 07:29

My parents got the day and date of my birth wrong by one day. It was nearly 50 years ago, and I was born at home. No-one questioned it at the time dad went to register my birth, but a few days later they reflected on events, and realised I was born on the Wednesday rather than Tues of the week. I always go by my official birthday, and since I wasn't born on the cusp of a school year, tax year, zodiac sign or any other important date it seems unimportant and we've always laughed about it.

BoredBoredBoredB · 07/03/2022 07:31

Appeal for witnesses!

MagnoliaXYZ · 07/03/2022 07:33

Hospitals keep birth registers, I don't know how far back they go nor how long they are kept, but every birth is written in the hospital's birth register and includes quite a bit of information including, obviously, date of birth.

Dinoteeth · 07/03/2022 07:34

Could your Dad have come home early, straight after lessons, or gone home at lunchtime to check on your mum?

Was he maybe conscious that mum was full term and struggling to look after your brother so trying to help as much as he could?

sodastreamer · 07/03/2022 07:36

Tbh it sounds the most likely thing is that your mum is wrong about the day. The actual date of someone's birthday is way more significant - your date of birth goes on so many forms- birth certificate onwards- passport, applications for all kinds of things etc, whereas you never need to tell anyone or record the day of the week you were born. Indeed, many people don't even know!
If your mum was adamant from the get go that you were born on a Sunday then that's clearly become reinforced in her (and your) mind over the years. That's a totally normal way the memory works. A belief is repeated and corroborated by others (eg if she kept talking about your grandparents being in church and everyone agreeing) then over time it's become a 'certainty' in her mind. Some details may be true- it seems likely the grandparents were in church but that doesn't necessarily mean it was a Sunday, as others have said, could have been another reason.

It's also possible it was an admin error with registration but tbh that seems less likely than your mum mis- remembering. It just seems highly unlikely that the actual date of birth would be wrong. I've heard of that occasionally with people much much older, when there was more likelihood of errors in the system but presumably with your mum being 70, you were born in the 1970s or 80s and it would have taken more than one error in the registration process for your actual date of birth to be incorrect

BertieBotts · 07/03/2022 07:37

I get confused about what days my children were born becaue I went past midnight all three times. And then the few days after a baby is born are a complete blur of feeds and sleeps and you barely know whether it's night or day. The second and third were even born during summer holidays so I didn't even have school to help out. I don't think that's implausible at all! I don't remember oh the 5th of X was a Monday. I just remember I was doing Y when I went into labour and that was Friday (or whatever).

A couple of hours is quite a short birth.

That said, I had the same. My mum always said I was born on a Wednesday when the rhyme came up. Yet if I look it up on my computer calendar or put my date of birth in on some online forms it clearly tells me it is Thursday. It doesn't matter, a Wednesday and Thursday are pretty similar and she probably just lost track of the days. If you asked me what day my child's birthday was last year or what day of the week I got married (not a Saturday, too expensive) I wouldn't have a clue without looking it up. Why would you remember the weekday of something that happened decades ago?

Why would online calendars be wrong? All of them? Confused (Not OP but somebody else said this!)

Febrier · 07/03/2022 07:38

Do I now celebrate my birthday the day before even though all my public records show it as being the next day?

I think we both know the answer to this. You must celebrate on both dates, just to be sure.

ChinstrapBobblehat · 07/03/2022 07:38

Or your mum just might have been mistaken somehow.

DD was born on a Friday. I know it was a Friday because I had an ECS and that was the day we specifically chose to fit in with work, weekend etc. Both DH and I would have sworn blind it was a Friday and bet everything we owned on it. It’s a very clear memory for both of us.

Except she wasn’t. When she had to look up her calendar birth date for some reason, turns out it was a Thursday. I’m still completely baffled by it and find it difficult to accept, but there you go 🤷‍♀️. Memory is very unreliable.

ThePennyJustDropped · 07/03/2022 07:38

I can well believe that the date was recorded incorrectly, it's an easy mistake to make. Things presumably weren't digitised when OP was born so literally just one person making a human error that wasn't spotted, and from there on why would anyone query it. I'm assuming once OPs mum saw the date written she presumed that was the correct date for the Sunday that she knew her DD was born on.

QueenOfThorns · 07/03/2022 07:38

My DF told me that DM was induced because it was Friday and the doctors wanted to go home for the weekend (Confused). I didn’t find out until years later, after both had died, that I was born on a Wednesday…

DeathMetalMum · 07/03/2022 07:42

I'd got for evening service at Church, then being born later after midnight. When I was younger there was 10am mass and then another mass at 5.30 or even 6.30. One of my grans always went to the evening mass after having Sunday lunch around 1pm.

HTruffle · 07/03/2022 07:44

Could it have been Easter Monday with the church bells?!

girlmom21 · 07/03/2022 07:45

@HTruffle

Could it have been Easter Monday with the church bells?!
In October?
PennyPinkPineapple · 07/03/2022 07:47

DH and I were both born on a Thursday (different years) but I just checked dayofbirth.co.uk and it says he was born on a Friday! I've googled it and the date was a Friday but this is something we had checked before and put down as another "thing we have in common" 🤔😬

PunkPanther · 07/03/2022 07:48

What about your NHS record? Surely that is correct?

BertieBotts · 07/03/2022 07:48

I think this is a relatively recent issue though. In days gone by nothing ever linked a weekday with a date easily. You'd have had to go back and painstakingly count (not forgetting leap years) or looked at an old calendar or diary to work out what day of the week something was. Again with being in labour, on a day that wasn't special before, there's not a huge amount of truth in the idea that you'd remember "Oh it's the 14th today" I didn't think about what the date was when my children were actually born. I was too exhausted from giving birth! The time and their weight seemed bizarrely to be the important details. (We already knew the sex). So you could relatively easily have the wrong day and then never see anything that contradicted it until the modern age where you find it popping up in an online form. And as sodastreamer says, this is indeed how memory works. We are not usually remembering the actual events, we remember a reconstruction of events. It's quite fascinating if you look into it.

Do you know without looking it up what day of the week 25 February was this year? Probably not, and it was only a couple of weeks ago.

Do you know your time of birth OP? That could add or take weight from the "laboured past midnight" idea.

Leftbutcameback · 07/03/2022 07:49

Memories are funny things. I've heard that you're not actually remembering the event, but instead remembering the last time you thought about it. Sometimes our brain gets confused and conflates two memories - so is it possible you thought your mum thought she was going into labour a week earlier and it was a false alarm? GPs were dragged out of church for that event. Does that make sense?

Riseholme · 07/03/2022 07:50

My dm’s birthday is the end of a month. When she came to retire the NI dept said her birth is officially the 3rd of the following month.
Her birth certificate states the 31st. We assume the MW who delivered her at home was late filling in her records and changed the date by a few days. This was the 1930’s so easier for the MW to do.
Weirdly her dob has never been queried for passports etc.

Lovemusic33 · 07/03/2022 07:52

Everything is a blur from when I gave birth, especially with dd1 as it was a long painful first labour and I was young and not prepared, I was in labour through the night with dd and all I can remember is ‘I’m a celebrity’ being on the hospital tv 🤣.

We’re you born on Easter Monday? People go to church on Easter Monday?

AlbusSeverusMalfoy · 07/03/2022 07:52

@SleepingStandingUp

Anyway, you're still fair of face. Ateast it wasn't a Wednesday.

DS and I are both Thursday children and DH and DTwins are Friday children.

I was born on a Wednesday. Very much Woeful at times.
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