As you begin to collect important stories from your family life, don’t miss out on reminiscing and writing about the births of the special people in your life – including yourself. Think for a minute about what it will mean to your children and grandchildren to one day read about the day they were born – all through the filter of what you experienced and felt that day. Let’s learn how to craft a simple written piece about “the day you were born.”

Telling Your Family Birth Stories

The story of the births of yourself and other family members is one of what I consider to be 5 starter topics to write for your family story collection. My mission is to help as many families as possible curate their family stories. 

My focus is always on trying to remove any obstacles and hindrances that are holding you back. I know it’s hard to start and sometimes you just need a nudge. To help with this, I’m giving potential family story collectors 5 important stories to write for future generations. 

Here are what I call the Big 5 – Personal Faith, Love Stories, Births, Career and – last but not least – Pets. Read more about the Big 5.

Let’s take a look at how to write and curate those sweet stories of family births.

An Important Story to Collect

There’s perhaps no more important family stories than those that contain the details of someone’s birth. Today’s version of these stories are often contained inside of text messages in brief snippets. “It’s a boy!” “It’s a girl! We named her Leah. She weighed 8 pounds and her eyes are blue like her mother’s.”

Personally, I believe that our children and grandchildren deserve to learn more about the day they were born than what most of us think to tell them. 

Writing Your Own Birth Story

But first, write your own birth story. I hope that your parents have told you this story before. This is an important one to collect for future generations.

My own mother shared with me some details about my birth that are very precious to me. Not so much the “facts,” but things like learning how she felt that day when she woke up from the anesthesia (standard protocol in the 1950s) and heard that she had given birth to a second daughter.

As her story goes, she and Dad had for some reason just assumed that I would be a boy. So – a boy’s name had been chosen and they had no clue what to name a baby girl. Nothing. Knowing how my dad liked to be right on top of things, I would have loved to have seen him panic a bit. All in all, I’m happy with the name they came up with in a pinch. Oddly enough, Mom never told me what the boy’s name would have been.

If you weren’t fortunate enough to hear the story of your own birth from your mom or dad, then you can also just gather the details for your descendants. Give them the details about where you were born and why your family lived in that city. Grab those baby pictures and fill out your story with any other details you’ve been given by older relatives or siblings through the years.

Writing Your Family’s Birth Stories

Now it’s time to share your own thoughts and experiences on the days when your children and grandchildren were born. 

To get started, go back to the day of your special person’s birth and maybe also the days surrounding it and just start to reminisce. These are sweet memories, aren’t they? Remember that this isn’t just a story of “facts” but also of feelings. Your feelings.

Here are some memory sparks to get you started:

• How and when did you find out that the baby was going to be born? How did you feel?Before you found out the gender, did you have a correct or incorrect prediction? What about the rest of your family?
• Was there anything unusual about that day? Crazy weather, world event, personal event?
• When did you first meet them? How did you feel?
• Share some stories about their birth experience – either first hand if you are the mother or based on what you observed or were told if you aren’t the mother.

As you collect your memories and thoughts about that special day, jot down some notes and begin writing. These may be the easiest family stories you’ll ever write because your memories about this event are so precious.

Now it’s time to sit down with your laptop, pen and paper, or maybe your phone’s voice memo app opened up. Start reminiscing about your family’s birth stories. Give your descendants stories to share with their own children about the days their ancestors were born.

Next up in the Big 5 – Career.