DS thinks he remembers being born

[sparebooks]

Walking along the road yesterday chatting to DS (4) about how his friend's mummy has had a baby pop out from her tummy.

He said "Mummy, when I popped out from your tummy all the noise hurted my ears?" I laughed and said oh do you remember it then? He was very earnest and reiterated that yes it was very noisy and his ears hurt. (Couldn't get anymore detail as he started talking about chocolate biscuits instead).

A quick google tells me that it's impossible to remember your birth. Does anyone else have DC with improbable memories / is he likely to be completely making this up..

I have memories of lying in my pram under a tree, and of curtain fabric that I later discovered was in my room until we moved when I was six months old. Some people do have very early memories.

I think birth does have an impact on us, whether in our conscious memory or in some other way that our body stores the experience. Talk to him about the circumstances around his birth.

When my son was 2 our neighbour died. It was late at night so we didn't know anything about it but the next morning son asked why the man was sitting on the wall and he kept looking up at the wall that adjoined the neighbour. He carried on comment about the man sitting on the wall until the neighbour was buried.

And if you (or the other poster who mentioned it) has trauma around the circumstances of your child's birth, seek support for this - there is no magic formula for erasing this trauma but there are things that can help reduce it's impact on you.

My ds is 8 and from about 4/3yo he was adamant he remembers his birth. He talked a lot about a big bright light in his face.

He actually was lay under a big heat lamp for the first few hours of his life.

I'm not sure if he just happened to overhear someone say that about him or if he actually remembers.

It’s meant to be very loud in the womb though with all the mother’s blood flow so close to their ears - that’s why babies like white noise.

I guess the noise upon being born would still be different, even if it wasn’t actually louder.

Personally I’m not convinced. I know I’ve manufactured a lot of memories from looking at photos.

One of the nurses was an absolute cow and said “oh look, you’ve finally decided to show your face. The first thing your son saw was the top of an incubator.”

I would have fantasies of vengeance about this comment. What a dick

I love the past life stories. There are lots of videos on tik tok about it. There is a scientist in NZ, I think, who is researching the phenomenon. The 2 you have listed are so interesting.

My DC who is on the spectrum and who is now 11 insists he remembers being born- always has done! They said they remember the blue curtains and lights and the noise 😳🤥

Yes goodness me. What a shit thing to say.

When pregnant with our first, we used to play a lot of classical music. Months later, when able to "select" a music station with her feet, she always picked Classic FM. To me, it suggested that she remembered it from when she was in the womb and liked it because of that memory.

Don’t laugh! When I was little, maybe 5yrs old, I had a very strong memory of being in my mother’s womb. Weightless, blissful and all folded up. All I could see was pink and orange. It seemed unlikely to me at the time but I couldn’t think what else this ‘memory’ could be, so who knows?

I’m sure there was a tv documentary that showed that children who had been in scbu did have memories, they took children into a unit and those that had been in them as babies were fine with it, didn’t mind the noises of alarms going off , could undo the units etc and those that hadn’t were a bit freaked out by it. Take from that what you will!

I do believe we do hold memories from a very early age.
My first distinct memory was lying in my pram and looking at these beautiful pink “lights” floating around and it wonderful.
My mum said it was impossible, but knew instantly she had left me in the pram under the cherry blossom tree in my grandmothers garden. I was three weeks old!

OMFG did the midwife really say that?! Christ on a bike, what a BITCH

No one in my family believes me but I have memories from being a baby. Just flickers really - things like waking up in my cot and being sad because my mum wasn't there and then crying. I remember sitting in my pushchair. Nothing from being a tiny baby - my memories are more from age 1.

I have clear memories of around age 2, a holiday that we went on and being allowed candy floss and my face being all sticky from it. There was a man dressed as Kermit the frog and I was terrified. I remember the scared feeling. DH says my memories are from photographs but the memories I have aren't on photos.

I don't remember being born though. I'd love to know if it's possible to remember for sure. That's amazing!

I'm almost 40 and I still have a pretty good memory. I always remember dates and things that have happened and it winds me up because no one else ever remembers anything 😂.

It was a paediatric nurse in the special care unit.

The midwives were just as bad though, sadly.

my Ds told me that when we die we all come back as babies, we remember initially and then we forget as we get older. He also consistently told me up until he was around 4 1/2 that I was his new mummy and described living in the forest with his siblings and his parents. Said the soldiers came and shot them and that is when he appeared with me. He said I was his new 'mummy' many times and it was quite hard tbh. He laughs now as he has no memory of ever saying it

I have a couple of very early memories, one very lovely one and one not so nice one. I would have been 2 at the time.

Lovely memory is of being in my stroller and it was raining out so the rain cover was on. We were at the outdoor market with my mum and nana and I remember feeling all cosy under my blankets and watching the rain drops pour down the rain cover and then my mum popped me a milky bar through the cover. I very contentedly ate my milky bar feeling all warm being on the inside whilst watching all the hubbub of the market outside. I don’t remember anything else of that day, just those few minutes of being warm cosy and happy. It was so lovely that even now I wish I could go back to that time and experience it again.

Not so lovely one, we had a family dog and old English Sheepdog who was my bestie. He was a big soft ball of fluff and we went everywhere together according to my mum. I suspect that without this incident I wouldn’t even remember said dog, because I don’t remember my relationship with the dog only what my mum told me. Anyway so I remember we were in the kitchen, dog was eating his dinner and I was stood next to him, the washing machine went on the spin cycle and startled the dog and he jerked his head up quickly and caught me with his teeth cutting my face. I must have screamed or cried as my mum came rushing, swooped me up and ran with me to the bathroom crying herself and trying to wash off the blood. I don’t remember anything after that until being at the hospital later and being held down by nurses while the doctor put the stitches in my face. One cut was so near my eye I couldn’t have any anaesthetic and so it was traumatic which I suspect is why I remember it.

Years later my mum was talking about the house we lived in at the time as was shocked when I could tell her the layout and about the red curtains in the kitchen and the Green bathroom suite. Despite remembering the house I had no clue what my bedroom looked like, or what my parents room looked like, and then it occurred to me the only reason why I remembered the bits I could tell my mum about were because those we the rooms we went in on the day of the incident.

Memory is a funny thing indeed!

Birth is traumatic and people do recall traumatic experiences, particularly sensory aspects of them.

I think it's possible, and it's a very odd thing for him to come out with about his ears hurting if it wasn't a real memory.

The noise must be quite a lot for tiny ears - not just the shouting etc but the noise of the physical pressure from the birth.

I think this is probably true.

My dad when she was tiny, about two, told me she could remember coming out of the dark I do the light.

*DD

I have a really clear memory of going to the hospital with my dad to pick up my baby brother. I would have been 2 and a half. I've had the memory all my life and it's very detailed with what the entrance to the hospital looked like, the dress my mum was wearing, my brother in his carrycot in the back seat of the car (70s child safety standards).

Except.... when I mentioned it in passing to my mum about 10 years back she told me:

I didn't go with my dad to the hospital to pick up my brother. I stayed at home with my gran.
My mum didn't have that dress until a couple of years later and it certainly wouldn't have fitted her immediate postpartum body
When I looked at pictures of the hospital online it's a completely different building.

I still have the memory, but brains are funny things!

So I was talking to a psychologist once who said that there's a study being done in Egypt I believe and it's been going in for 10 years (though I might of remembered these details wrong) so my child had a very traumatic birth. I nearly died etc.

She says that we have a sort of muscle memory and that's what this study has found. Not that we remember it in our brains but there's some kind of 'memory'

It's really interesting. They also found that when we feel that rush of love after birth it's due to the release of oxytocin and that of our babies aren't with us (mine wasn't) then they don't release oxytocin and that has something to do with depression later in life. I need to find it for you.

I would imagine that a lot of the immediate memory is supressed as it's so traumatic. I find stuff like this fascinating.