A birth story tells a child how they came into the world and can include the day they were born or their adoption day but either way, it allows a child to feel loved and wanted.  For years, mothers have been telling their children birth stories and I never really understood why until I had my own.  I know now that it helps the child understand where they came from and what their connection is to their parents.  You can see it sometimes when children re-tell their stories to their parents, showing how imperative it is to them to feel safe and wanted.  A birth story does not need to include all the gory details, but just the relevant facts that a child will understand.  Repeating the story to the child reinforces the bond you have with them and ensures that they feel good about themselves.

Crafting your child’s birth story also allows you to connect to a day that perhaps wasn’t the greatest because let’s face it, birthing a child is tough work.  Every day, we craft stories out of our experiences and re-tell them to others to convey what we have gone through, and yet, we still don’t really grasp the importance of stories and what they mean to our lives.  Stories and narratives give meaning to our lives and show us things that we may not have expected at face-value.  Even the stories themselves change over time, but that doesn’t mean the essence of the story itself has changed.  Especially for children, stories are incredibly important for building their worlds, imaginations, self-esteem, and how they view themselves.  When you tell a story, no matter who it is about, they engage the listener because listeners ultimately can see themselves in your story and can put themselves in your role and that is how we teach compassion.  As such, the most powerful story is the story of when you were born.

 Luma Pimentel