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..

To add - he also remembered 3 pieces of music I had only played while pregnant with him.

I remember waking up crying in my cot and holding onto the bars. I was wearing a little yellow cardigan and the white buttons had tiny ducks on them, I vividly remember this. There weren't any pictures of this (1970s).

I was trying to stand up and then Mum came in and lifted me out. I mentioned this to her years ago, apparently I was around 6 months old when that cardigan fitted me 😲

Know of a child, similar age , who also pointed out where they’d lived and died in old age.

Our memories are prone to faults and falsifications. I don't think it will be a real memory, but it might be real to him. This is why witness statements are so liable to incorrect or missing information and can't really be relied on.

I have an episode that I remember from childhood. At the very least I swear my mum told me about it. When I memtioned it years later she said it had never happened.

Also I can imagine our youngest grandchild saying something like this. He has a very vivid imagination.

Bloody hell. Some people really are in the wrong job aren't they?!

My 70+ yr old dad remembers lying in a pram outside a shop, he would have been less than 6 months old (details confirmed by grandparents before they died!)

My earliest memory is from 18m old when my sister was born, I remember being allowed to "hold" her (with my dad's help!) when she came home from the hospital. Nothing else at all until about 4 years old though.

There is a documented case of an autistic woman who can remember every day of her life in detail and can remember her birth.

I have heard that some autistic people can retain earlier memories than neurotypical people.

I can remember when I was 2 years old and have a vivid memory having just turned three years old.

I can remember wearing nappies and having a bottle. I believe that some people can remember their birth.

I remember a loud whooshing sound from when I was a child and not understanding what it was. Many decades later I hear that sound again. It was when I had an ultrasound and the noise was my babies heart in utero.

@Intrepidescape I've heard about her. Our understanding of how memories are created is actually a bit lacking and we're going to see interesting developments over the next couple of decades.

I emphatically argued with my very Catholic mother 🙏that I was at her wedding when I was 4 or 5 years of age. Given that I was the youngest of 5 and this was 50 + years ago in rural Ireland, this did not go down well, 🤐oh and and was utter hogwash since they had married some 14 years before i was born.

So I would take what your ds says with a pinch of salt. 😀

I remember when I was a sperm, it was sunny from what i can remember and I was very happy.

My DD at 3 gave me into trouble because she said when she was in my tummy I ate food and it hit her on the head 😂

I was told once that children can remember very early memories like being born up to when they're about 4yo then they tend to forget them.
Ds at about 3yo talked about being warm inside me and wooshing noise (I assume heart beat). But he couldn't remember it at 5yo.

Is it because you used the word 'popped' out and things that pop can be loud, like a balloon or something?
It sounds like he is imagining that popping out of a tummy is literal.

My friends 4YO also remembers his “other mummy” leaving him in a church in a box…

Kids just have wild imaginations!

@Minfilia in fairness she has also told me that she was born at the bottom of a green lake, and very earnestly said that she was very lonely when I left her alone on the Great Wall of China...

I don't remember being born, but I do remember being weighed on baby scales with my nappy on at the doctors/health visitors clinic.

I have memories of being in my silver cross pram in both rainy and sunny weather on walks or being left outside the house or in our garden with a light white material covering most of me from the sun, but i remember peering out the gaps in the side looking at the garden and my Mum busy hanging washing on the line.

I also remember being in my pram with the seat up and the hood up wrapped up warm and cozy and feeling safe and happy, watching the and listening to the rain on the cover (much like another poster), and more where I remember my brother who was 10 months older than me climb into the pram for a cuddle and a nap.

I remember my Mum changing my Terry towelling nappy in 1979 with the large safety pin, I remember lying with my legs up in the air as she tucked me all in and I remember sucking my tummy in so that she didn’t jag my tummy with the pin like she had done before.

I vividly remember being in my high chair that was padded plastic leatherette type material on the seat and back of it, and had silver metal sides, there was a cute picture of a teddy bear and flowers on the part where you put you back, and had nylon reigns straps to clip you in, and my Aunt was looking after me, I was too young to feed myself and she was force feeding me chopped up tinned plum tomatoes, which i have and still do despise, and I was putting up a protest and crying trying to get her to stop. She didn’t, so I remember being fearful of her and harbouring resentment the next time I seen her.

I remember specific animals and the sounds and smells and look of the tenament flats from visiting my Gran when she was well. I remember riding on the back of a grate dane (being held on by adult) in that close. All of these under age 2.

One most strongly and less fleeting was my Uncle had been hunting and killed a rabbit then found all its babies, he brought them home to my Gran who was an animal lover and rescued all kinds of them all the time, and i remember him emptying a box of fluffy baby bunny’s out in her living room, the were tiny and hopping all over the place and incredibly cute, then I seen one squeeze into the tiniest gap in the wooden edge of a built up fireplace and mantle, I tried to get their attention and was pointing and telling them one went in the fireplace, but they didn’t believe me at first, because the I was so young and because there was no visible large gap or hole they could see it having gone in through, the space was around a cm or two, sure enough they counted and realised one was missing and soon heard it moving around inside and had to take the thing apart to save it.

I remember the interior decor and layout of a couple houses my Auntie lived in between me being aged 1 & 3.

I guess, 4 years isn’t a massive amount of time … maybe it takes a bit longer to stop remembering stuff! (Admittedly I struggle to remember what I ate for dinner yesterday!!)

It was a while ago but I did a psychology degree and covered memory. There are a lot of theories about how it works! But I remember reading one that said we remember everything it’s just the recall that breaks down (like if you stop walking on a path it’ll become overgrown, so the route to the location fades but not the location itself). Which could explain why my grandma (97) with dementia has a fabulous memory for her childhood now (doesn’t remember me anymore)… it’s like her brain is all jumbled and a wind has swept away the cobwebs from her old paths but swiftly plonked them on her newer memories!!!

I remember being in my pram and my cot. It's just a very clear imagine of what I could see-thr bars of the cot and the ceiling above and in the pram, my toddler brother sat in front of me so maybe at 4 years old you could remember some detail of being born.

I can remember my parents old house which they moved out of when I was 9 months old. I remember my mum holding me up at the window and talking about dylis and tim. I asked my mum as an adult and those were the neighbours names
also I remember the new house and crawling around. I found a little tin soldier ( I didn’t know what it was at the time ) again my mum says that was true.

can’t remember being born tho. Although I have an aunt who does remember her own birth - being pushed/ forced along a dark tunnel away from what felt like safety and familiar Not wanting to go but knowing she had to as the ‘hands’ were pushing her towards the bright noisy light at the end of the tunnel

I went on holiday at age 17 on far north west Scotland and looking out over a viewpoint with my mum, ‘you know they’re called the summer isles.’

They were - but I’d never been there in my life, neither had my mum, and there was nothing indicating their name anywhere.

I remember my mum being a bit, ‘how do you know that?’ . I just did, it was like a voice in my mind telling me, very strange.

Friend said to me today, ‘you have a very powerful emotional memory’ whatever that means. She’s very into spirituality and is insistent I’ve been around several times over.

Get that with mum sort of - dementia - she can’t say hello but if you put on a piece of music she learnt a dance routine to in 1997 she can still do it. It’s the strangest thing.

I have one early memory.. I was sitting on top of the piano pulling tissues from a box while my Grandad played the piano. There are no photos of me from that age as we didn't have a camera. My grandad developed dementia when I was a baby, and my Mum reckons I can't have been more than about 13 or 14m old as he couldn't play after that.

My son talked about his 'other mummy' from before he was born to me. He said he was glad he picked me to be his mum this time. And he picked me because I looked just like his other mum. He was about 3 when he told me this.... he doesn't remember it now (he's 10).

Got to admit it made the hair on my neck stand on end!

My step mum told me that that if you ask a child under a certain age if they remember being born that they can! I can't remember the age she said I think 3 ish they obviously would have to be able to vocalise it. I asked my eldest, he said he it was scary but then everything was ok. He was premmie and it was a very long slow labour. My second said he was warm and comfortable and didn't want to come out!