essay on the day i was born

The Year I Was Born: An Autobiographical Research Project

• Resources & Preparation
• Instructional Plan
• Related Resources

In this autobiography with a twist, students conduct interviews of friends and family members, as well as online and library research to find details on what was going on internationally, nationally, locally, in sports, music, arts, commercial, TV, and publishing during the year that they were born. After they've gathered their research, they discuss how they will organize their information, typically in chronological order, and then create a rough outline. In small groups, students share and get feedback on their research and outlines. They then refine their outline into a paper that they publish as a newspaper or booklet using an online publishing tool.

Featured Resources

• Printing Press : Use this online tool to create a newspaper, brochure, booklet, or flyer. Students choose a layout, add content, and then print out their work.

From Theory to Practice

This mini-research paper draws on Daniels and Bizar's idea of integrative units, combining research into a specific historical time and research into students' family lives with the English study of understanding voice and point of view in a writing assignment. Carol Booth Olson believes authentic research "stems from a student's intense need to know about a topic that has immediate relevance for him or her." In this instance, the topic the student is researching is his or her place in the world at the time of his or her birth.

Further Reading

Common Core Standards

This resource has been aligned to the Common Core State Standards for states in which they have been adopted. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, CCSS alignments are forthcoming.

State Standards

This lesson has been aligned to standards in the following states. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, standard alignments are not currently available for that state.

NCTE/IRA National Standards for the English Language Arts

• 1. Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.
• 5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
• 7. Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and nonprint texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience.
• 8. Students use a variety of technological and information resources (e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.
• 12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).
• Form For Gathering Research Information
• Writing Rubric
• Self-Reflection
• Short Model
• Links to Websites
• Research Project: The Year I was Born

Preparation

• Make copies or overhead transparencies of all handouts students will need: Year I Was Born Research Project , Links to Websites handout, Sample Paper , Research Form , Self-Reflection questions, and Research Paper Rubric . Alternatively, arrange to project the handouts using an LCD Projector.
• Arrange for Internet access for students, so they can complete the online research and publish their work.
• Test the Printing Press on your computers to familiarize yourself with the tools and ensure that you have the Flash plug-in installed. You can download the plug-in from the technical support page.

Student Objectives

Students will:

• conduct research, using a variety of resources including personal interviews, primary documents, and online research.
• evaluate resources to find those best for the project.
• demonstrate an understanding of point of view by adopting the voice of a family member or another adult.
• write an autobiographical research paper.

Session One

• Hand out the Year I Was Born Research Project and the Research Paper Rubric .
• Share the details of the activity with the handouts then share the sample paper .
• If you desire, share additional examples online .
• Discuss the  strategies that students will use, brainstorming sample interview questions and ways that students can use library and online resources.
• Help students choose their storyteller by providing a variety of options and examples.
• Students should interview others about the first year of their life. Many students will be able to interview their family about their birth and first year of life as well as look through family photographs, their baby books, and so forth. It is inevitable, however, that you will have one or more students who will not have this kind of family information due to divorce, being adopted later in life, being a ward of the state, or in the case of one of my students, a house fire. Make exceptions for these students and talk about the exceptions in class to be sure that all students are included, suggesting they interview anyone who might know some of their history, or skip the interview part entirely and have them do their project using just their research. Students can also write from a fictional point of view, for example, taking the persona of a reporter writing a special report about the year with their birth taking a prominent place. If they have no older siblings, the story can be told from the perspective of a household pet that was in the family before them.
• If desirable, change the assignment to a slightly different focus, to fit more of your students' experiences. For instance, students might research and write about "The Year I Was Adopted," "My First Year of School," or "The Year We Moved." You may wish to provide some guidelines, such as the event explored should have happened at least 5 years ago.

Sessions Two and Three

• Arrange for library and online research time, where students can consult periodicals such as Time , Newsweek , and U.S. News and World Report for the month and year they were born.
• Remind students that their research might include commercials, slogans, births, deaths, sports news, movies, books, plays, music, financial, national news, international news, religious events, music, TV shows, and local news.
• Have students search for their birth date on the Internet. Many of these sites give information for their birth date throughout history. To narrow to the year they were born, choose only those events that occurred in their birth year.
• Pass out the Links to Websites handout and the Research Form for students to use during their research.
• Remind students to record all of their information from their interviews and research on the Research Form , including the information needed to prepare a Works Cited page.
• Point students to their class textbook or the Landmarks Citation Machine Website for information on MLA format.
• While students work, monitor their progress, offering feedback and assistance as needed.

NOTE: While the goal of this lesson is not to explicitly teach research strategies, you may wish to have students include in-text citations in their written projects, in addition to a Works Cited page.  This could be used as an extension or an addition for students who are more advanced and require a challenge.

Session Four

• After students have completed their research, discuss organization of the paper.
• If desired, use the Sample Paper to outline the order that details are included in. Typically, these stories are told in chronological order.
• To begin the organization of their papers, ask students to arrange their completed Research Forms in chronological order.
• Using the ordered forms, ask students to create a rough outline for their stories.
• Divide students into small groups, and ask them to share the basic details of their research and their outlines with each other.
• What is the most surprising thing about the writer's research and outline?
• What did you like the most about the writer's plan?
• What question do you have about the research and outline?
• At the end of the session, remind students of the specific requirements of the assignment, pointing to the Rubric for more information.
• Ask students to use the feedback, their research, and their outlines to write their papers for homework. Ideally, students should complete the work in a word processor and bring the file on a disk to the next session.

Session Five

• Answer any questions that students have after writing their papers.
• Demonstrate the Printing Press , showing students the formats available and pointing out those best for the assignment (probably the first newspaper layout or one of the booklet layouts). Alternatively, a newspaper, brochure, or booklet can be created in Microsoft Publisher or a word processor, instead of using the Printing Press .
• Demonstrate how to copy the document from the word processor file and paste it into format template. If copy and paste doesn't work, students can type their mini research paper directly into the template.
• Remind students to include a Works Cited page at the end of their document.
• Copy and paste your photograph into the template.
• Print out document.
• If desired, students can add photos or other images to the booklets or newspapers.
• If time allows, students can share their stories in small groups or with the full class before submitting them.

Student Assessment / Reflections

• Using the Self-Reflection questions, ask students to think about the steps they took as they worked on this assignment—what they had problems with, how they worked out their problems, and how they feel about their final project.
• Use the Research Paper Rubric to evaluate students’ work on the paper itself.
• Calendar Activities
• Student Interactives
• Professional Library

Students imagine they have been asked to participate in a museum exhibit, take photos/videos of a significant location, and write or record reflections. Students can also create an exhibit from something they have read.

Students interview a parent or another adult about the Challenger and hypothesize about differences. Students can also write about the Columbia disaster in 2003.

After thinking about TV shows, books, and movies from their childhood, students write about what they remember and revisit how they feel about it at an older age.

Today is the first day of the New Year on the Chinese lunar calendar.

The interactive Printing Press is designed to assist students in creating newspapers, brochures, and flyers.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Sibling — The Day My Brother Was Born

The Day My Brother Was Born

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Published: Aug 24, 2023

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Personal Birthday Speech Presentation

Introduction.

1st of January 1994 is the most important day of my life, as it is the day I was born, the day I was given life by my parents for what I must thank them for the rest of their days. I also express my gratitude to all of you who came here to listen to my birthday speech. It is an honor for me to share my feelings about this day with you, and I hope you feel the same.

My birthdate in the World History

This day was not only the day of my birth; it was also the beginning of the International Year of Family ( IYF , n.d.), the day Bill Gates got married ( Melinda Gates , n.d.), and North American Free Trade Agreement finally going into effect ( North American Free Trade Agreement , n.d.). It means a lot for me to be born in parallel with these important events.

Important political events like the Zapatista Uprising also occurred on 01.01.1994 ( The Zapatista uprising , n.d.). It was also the day Karamazov brothers finally closed in New York after 50 performances ( Historical events , n.d.). On that very day, Grand Night after Singing also closed after 52 performances ( A Grand Night for Singing , n.d.).

My birthdate in my family history

The date of my birth is surrounded by various family events, the most notable one is that I was born on the 10 year wedding anniversary of my parents ! From that moment, 1st of January 1994 became an even more important day that it was before. My parents say that during my birthday the weather was exactly the same as at the time of their wedding.

Another interesting fact is that my uncle met his beloved at the very same day. Even now my uncle still jokes about me being some sort of his “luck talisman” that helped him to finally find the one he was looking for. Back then I would not probably give that much attention to these details, but now when I think about it, I do not believe that was just a coincidence.

Coincidences happen, but not that many, and especially during the New Year ! My Mom and Dad have always said that I was the best gift that they could ever get, and I feel the same way in a sense that the gift of the new life that they granted me with is something I will never forget. I sincerely hope that all future birthdays will be as memorable as mine.

There was also an another small event that happened in parallel with my birthday, like my younger brother finally receiving the present he wanted for so long – a huge remote control robot with lasers and noisy sounds. Little did he know that Santa also had another present for him. Perhaps not as wanted as that robot, but still the one that could be played with.

I am extremely glad to be born on this day not only because of these important events, but also because I was born at the beginning of the New Year, which is essentially the start of new life period for each of us, and I am glad to be a part of this new cycle in some way. Thank you for sharing this moment with me, and I am looking forward to hearing about your birthdays too.

A Grand Night for S inging . (n.d.). Web.

Historical events. (n.d.). Web.

IYF. ( n.d.). Web.

Melinda Gates . (n.d.). Web.

North American Free Trade Agreement . (n.d.). Web.

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IvyPanda. (2023, October 31). Personal Birthday Speech. https://ivypanda.com/essays/personal-birthday-speech/

"Personal Birthday Speech." IvyPanda , 31 Oct. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/personal-birthday-speech/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Personal Birthday Speech'. 31 October.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Personal Birthday Speech." October 31, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/personal-birthday-speech/.

1. IvyPanda . "Personal Birthday Speech." October 31, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/personal-birthday-speech/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Personal Birthday Speech." October 31, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/personal-birthday-speech/.

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Newspaper From The Day You Were Born

To see the full range of newspapers available from the day you were born, simply enter your date of birth and select ‘Search’. All titles available are complete genuine originals allowing you to read more than just the headlines from the day you were born.

Every newspaper is a guaranteed genuine original and comes complete with a personalised certificate of authenticity, which you can add a personal message to for the recipient, making a great finishing touch for the perfect gift. What better way to discover the news from the day you were born than by reading it as it was reported at the time?

Why Newspapers Make the Perfect Day You Were Born Gifts

People have an innate curiosity to know what happened on the day they were born and understand how the world they know today once was. Often memories that we are too young to recall directly can be prompted by revisiting them through visual cues, such as the images and firsthand accounts found in newspapers from that very day. As the recipient reads through a newspaper from the day they were born they are likely to experience a wave of nostalgia and have some fond memories prompted.

Nostalgic gifts are especially popular for milestone birthdays, but why settle for a trinket from that decade, year, or even month, when there are gifts from the day you were born available? As the world’s largest archive you can not only find newspapers available from the day you were born, but also select specific national, and regional titles!

Headlines From The Day You Were Born

Surprisingly it is often the parts of a newspaper that you most commonly skip over which turn out to be the most fascinating when reading a historic paper from the day you were born . Front pages were often filled with advertisements that now offer a fascinating insight into a bygone age; be it the prices, style of language used or even the products or services themselves! The photographs and images printed on the day you were born will of course be as clear and legible as the day they were printed after having been carefully preserved under optimum conditions.

With the world’s largest private collection of archived newspapers we can almost guarantee a newspaper will be available from the day you were born. Newspapers over 100 years old are generally bought for historical interest although we have even supplied a born day newspaper for someone born 110 years ago! There are a huge range of title to choose from for the majority of dates, including many that are no longer in circulation. Some examples of the newspaper titles that are no longer printed include the Daily Graphic, the News Chronicle, The Citizen – and many others.

Perfect Gifts From The Day You Were Born

There is also a great selection of gift presentation options that not only offer the perfect finishing touch, to what is already a unique and one of a kind gift, but also help preserve the newspaper so it can be enjoyed for years to come. Choose from a huge range; including a red satin lined gift box, a presentation folder, a cherry wood gift box or even having the newspaper framed.

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The Day I Was Born: Oral History Collection from Earle, Arkansas

Book – Non-fiction. By Eugene Richards. 2020. the day I was born tells the history of a small town in Arkansas through oral histories and photographs.

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Earle, Arkansas, is one of countless towns with a history of Civil Rights Movement activism and violent white resistance that do not make the history textbooks.

The resistance in Earle turned into a riot on September 10 and 11, 1970, when “a group of whites armed with guns and clubs attacked a group of unarmed African Americans who were marching to the city hall in Earle to protest segregated conditions in the town’s school system. Five African Americans were wounded, including two women who were shot.” The protestors  were also demanding that the polluted town dump be moved from the Black neighborhood. (These events are described in detail in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas in two entries: Earle Race Riot and William Ezra Greer .)

Richards had been in the Arkansas Delta as a VISTA volunteer. Then he helped found a social service organization and newspaper, for which he was a reporter and photographer. In early 2019, Richards returned to the region to examine change. While there, he went to Earle “with the single purpose of revisiting a place I’d reported on when a young journalist 50 years earlier.”

People he met were eager to talk about their lives. Among these conversations, were stories about the history of protest and social change in the region, systemic racism, poverty, Black history, abuse of women, and the struggle to be what you want to be. Recognizing the power of these deeply personal stories, Richards recorded and collected them in the 160-pages of the day I was born , published by Many Voices Press in 2020, with full color photographs.

Thanks to a generous donor, hundreds of copies of the $60 book were made available free to teachers for their lessons on Arkansas history, U.S. history, and/or on approaches to oral history collection. Now, it can be purchased from the author’s website .

To learn about the stories in the book, read the following essay by Robert Dannin , an independent scholar in linguistics and anthropology. Dannin collaborated with Richards when they both worked at Magnum Photos, was a student of Howard Zinn’s at Boston University , and contributes to the Zinn Education Project.

The Many Voices of the Arkansas Delta

By Robert Dannin

The march, it’s mostly forgotten. Earle is nothing but a little out-of-the-way place that most people haven’t heard anything about. We never really did get much news coverage. We’re too far from Little Rock. And in Memphis, unless there’s a murder, they hardly holler, didn’t bother about coming. (pp. 148 – 149)

So concludes Jackie Greer in recounting the history of a 1970 civil rights march in the delta town of Earle, Arkansas. Her friend, Jessie Mae Maples, was shot in the back and despite serious damage to her vital organs kept on walking. “I was shot bad, but never did fall down. I never did lose consciousness, till they put me in the hospital and had to do surgery. I lost my kidney, my spleen, part of my pancreas” (p. 127).

Jessie Mae survived to testify about the reign of terror on peaceful protesters that September night. More astounding perhaps was the unexpected apology she received years later from a local town official, a white man. Was it a confession? Perhaps. Yet no one was ever charged or arrested for this brutal attack. After nearly a half-century Maples still has her bloodstained clothes and vivid memories of the struggle for change in the little town of Earle.

In the tradition of James Agee and Walker Evans’ Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), a widely heralded chronicle of the Great Depression, Eugene Richards’ the day I was born (Brooklyn: Many Voices Press, 2020) explodes the myth — once again — that history is conducted by celebrities on a television screen before a national audience. In words and pictures, the day I was born depicts the enduring, conflict-plagued legacy of African Americans’ steadfast resistance to slavery and their unswerving demand for equality. From the first page onward, it resuscitates the intimate personal narrative as the cry of freedom and testament to hope for the generations silenced not only by institutional racism but also by a mass media deaf to their voices, blind to their tears, indifferent to their fate.

The Black citizens of Earle tell horrific stories. Change has come at a snail’s pace mostly to the once segregated town where racial, gender, and class prejudice still simmer beneath the surface. Joseph Perry Jr. explains the broken legacy of Civil War and Reconstruction, chronic unemployment, and the twisted psychology of status based on skin tone (pp. 11-14). Lovell Davis takes the reader from his childhood of deep poverty ­— “. . .  never owned a toy … ragged and dirty [and hungry] . . .” — through a tyrannical criminal justice system (pp. 81-94).

No details are spared in recounting the hours of hard labor spent by children chopping cotton, mothers banding together to feed their families, students forced into inferior schools that were integrated in name only, and the grim realities of migrant labor. Longstanding taboos fall by the wayside in Timothy Way’s narrative about growing up gay amidst the community’s latent homophobia. Similarly, Jackie Greer and Lovell Davis pull no punches in describing segmented, reactionary church networks. Davis declares (p. 137):

What you had right here in Earle was 37 churches, and every one of them was separated. Every church, every pastor, want his pot. They won’t help put a grocery store in here. They won’t put a clothes store in here. They won’t put a service station in here. But we can bear witness in their church.

Resistance was diverse and creative. Women and children led the fight against Jim Crow with boycotts of local businesses, high school walkouts, and ballot box activism. Undeterred by police violence they challenged environmental racism years before the first Earth Day. Businessman Stacy Abram decided to combat the symbolic violence of the region’s ubiquitous Confederate monuments by hiring the talented artist Timothy Way to memorialize African American heroes in a series of monochrome portraits on the exterior of his appliance store. The fearless Rev. Ezra Greer arrived from Chicago to start the Soul Institute, an alternative school for Black students, while Lovell Davis rehabilitated himself through vocational training and higher education.

The book conveys important lessons: Change happens, sometimes rapidly as when the town dump was closed following the 1970 civil rights march, but more often social transformation is slow, cumulative, and arduous. Sadly, positive change is also reversible, meaning that newly acquired rights must be defended from one generation to the next. That can only happen with education of the kind provided by dedicated teachers armed with good materials. In this instance, Richards has deftly organized the book’s contents to bring us from the near historical past of the civil rights era into contemporary issues of intersectionality and wholesale marginalization marked by the intensified assault on human rights and the obscene national wealth gap. Arkansas is home to Walmart and its owners, America’s wealthiest family, who could improve life for everyone in the state by spending their pocket change only. Yet the state’s economic collapse brooks few distinctions. Poor white and Black people are increasingly besieged together on the precipice of bare existence. Timothy Way, for example, now shares Sandra Gray’s meager home where they care for a destitute white cancer patient.

These testimonies and others blaze with passion. They strike the reader like heat from an open furnace. Eugene Richards’ images punctuate the narratives with revealing portraits, landscapes, and close-up details of Timothy Way’s murals. He alternates voices and pictures to establish a rhythm internal to the book — a deliberate, remarkably successful experiment to channel between Earle’s personages and a wide audience, immersing them in this “little out-of-the-way place.”

the day I was born is a documentary masterwork, as cinematic and intense as any film or book ever to feature eyewitness accounts of contemporary life in the rural South. It will serve students and teachers as a template for recording their community’s social history through interviews and photographs. Because the personal narratives are so compelling and seamlessly woven together with pictures, the book makes it look like an easy exercise. Hardly the case though when considering the levels of intimacy and sincere contact required to probe the deepest memories of a bitter past whose truth is seldom if ever reflected in textbooks.

As a student at Boston University in 1970, I learned people’s history from the master. “Got a tape recorder, a car?” Professor Howard Zinn asked one day. “. . . OK, good.” He reached around his desk and handed me a note with a name, address and telephone number. “This man was treated unfairly and forced from his job. He’s got a story to tell. It’s important to get all of it,” he advised, flashing his characteristic glint. It was an invitation to undertake a serious assignment for the first time in my life.

Later that week I met Charles Ramsey at his house in Roxbury, Massachusetts. He had immigrated from Jamaica expecting to work hard and build a life to match his youthful dreams of equality and freedom. Yet the racism he experienced working as a dispatcher for a major trucking company disappointed and angered him. Behind his pain and seething indignation Ramsey was a humble, gentle man. Anticipating our interview, he had prepared a 20-page handwritten autobiography. It contained a poem about his boyhood trek to a local mountaintop where he envisioned a future of justice and equality. I don’t think he expected anything from me beyond the occasion to tell his story. I wasn’t a lawyer, he never intended to sue. But that was enough for him and for me; it was a powerful encounter of the kind that structures one’s values forever. Imagine the educational moment for an 18 year-old middle class kid. Zinn knew that such opportunities don’t arise from reading a few books or debating abstract issues in a classroom.

In 1969, Eugene Richards traveled to the Arkansas Delta for the first time as a VISTA volunteer. In 1970, he helped create RESPECT, Inc. a social service organization that published Many Voices , a newspaper for people living in the Arkansas Delta. the day I was born (2020) is his third publication documenting their lives, preceded by Few Comforts or Surprises (1973) and Red Ball of a Sun Slipping Down (2014). A lifetime of honing his craft went into producing this compressed oral-visual history of life in Earle from the Civil Rights Era to the present.

Read more by Dannin on the day I was born in Photocritic International (April, 2021) “ The Many Voices of the Arkansas Delta” Part 1  and Part 2

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Decorated WWI veteran Clinton Briggs was killed in Arkansas.

Sept. 30, 1919: Elaine Massacre

Black farmers were massacred in Elaine, Arkansas for their efforts to fight for better pay and higher cotton prices. A white mob shot at them, and the farmers returned fire in self-defense. Estimates range from 100-800 killed, and 67 survivors were indicted for inciting violence.

Dec. 29, 1923: Terror Attack on African Americans in Catcher, Arkansas

The Catcher “Race Riot” began in Arkansas, leading to the creation of another sundown town.

April 3, 1934: Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union

The Southern Tenant Farmers Union broke away from a larger organization and became a racially integrated workers union.

July 15, 1964: Ozell Sutton Denied Service at Arkansas Capitol Cafeteria 

WWII veteran Ozell Sutton was denied service at the Arkansas Capitol cafeteria after visiting the building to collect voter registration materials.

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Descriptive Essay: The Day I Met My Little Brother

I always wanted a baby brother or sister because being the only child got lonely sometimes. I always sat there in my room, playing with my Barbies, but always wanted someone to play with. Of course I had friends my age, but “they couldn’t live with me,” my mother repeatedly told me after my crying sessions when they left. I wanted someone to mess with and blame things on. If I took the last cookie off the plate, I couldn’t blame anyone. It was clearly me. I mean, I loved being spoiled by both of my parents, but my dad wouldn’t want to sit down and have tea parties with me and my stuffed animals, and my mother got tired of it after an hour or so. So where did that leave me? Alone with Mr. Penguin with his overstuffed white belly, and my favorite pink bear with the bright yellow hat that I can’t remember the name of now.

It was hot. Well maybe it wasn’t, but that’s how I felt. I tried to hide the tears that were about to come down by smiling. That always worked. “Cool,” I said. My dad could see that there was some subliminal message that I wasn’t telling him, but he went along with it. I stared into the baby’s big brown eyes, complemented by long eyelashes I envied. He looked back at me and smiled. “Hi Legend, I’m your big sister.”

It was a regular day after school, but I decided to go over my dads for a little while before I went home. My dad picked me up from Broad & Olney and on the ride to his house, he blasted some good ole hip hip in his oversized truck. When we reached a parking spot, he stopped me.

“Symone, I got a surprise for you.”

“What is it,” I said eagerly.

I wasn’t used to surprises from my dad, better yet ones that followed through. He continued into the house, and I followed behind him. The ten step passage seemed like a flight of five stairs due to my excitement. I was cheesing, thinking my surprise was something nice for me. Money, or a new phone. You know, what most kids my age looked forward to. My face immediately dropped.

My step mom was sitting there with a baby in her arms.

“Who is he?” I asked. It came out harsher than I expected.  

“This is Legend, he’s your brother. That’s your surprise.”

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know if I should yell at him for having ANOTHER kid without me knowing or if I should pretend to be happy. I didn’t know what to do right then and there. I was thinking about his stupid wife for giving birth to the baby without telling me, and him for lying to me. The day my “little brother” was conceived was the very same day my dad cancelled plans with me. Now I could see why.

“Oh,” I finally got out, “how old is he?”

“Three months,” my step mom replied. Then, silence.

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‘At 51, My Mom Became My Surrogate—And Helped Make Me A Mama’

After struggling with infertility, Breanna Lockwood shares how she received the ultimate gift.

As soon as my daughter was born, the doctors handed her directly to me and the whole world stopped. She was healthy, perfect, and looked exactly like my husband. Our surrogate was also healthy, stable, and, officially, a grandma. My mom had helped make me a mama.

My daughter Briar is now 3. She is super spunky and has a big personality. She's kept us on our toes since the day she was born. And she knows she came from Grandma’s belly. They have an extremely close relationship and get to see each other almost every day. Briar is too young to fully understand the concept, but my family decided that our surrogacy story would always be a regular part of our life.

My husband and I were high school sweethearts, and when we got married in 2016, we immediately tried to start a family. After eight months with no luck, I went to my ob-gyn, who referred us to a fertility specialist in Chicago. First, we tried intrauterine insemination (IUI), a procedure that boosts the chances of getting pregnant by placing a sperm directly in the uterus. The first round was unsuccessful, and I was impatient, so we switched to in vitro fertilization (IVF), the most effective type of fertility treatment, in which an egg is fertilized by sperm in a lab before being transferred directly into the uterus.

I ended up having six unsuccessful IVF transfers, including two that ended in miscarriage —once after the second transfer and then again with twins. I was also diagnosed with Asherman syndrome after my miscarriage with the twins due to damaged scar tissue on the inside of my uterus, making future pregnancies more difficult and high risk.

At the time, all my friends were pregnant, and I felt so isolated. Every month I built the strength to try another round of IVF, and each time it didn’t work out, I was crushed. It was a vicious cycle. Infertility also took a serious toll on my body. I was pumping myself with hormones, my body was changing, and I was fatigued, tired, and emotional. The countless procedures, blood draws, transfers, and exams were unpleasant and painful. It felt as if I were in medical stirrups every day.

Eventually, my doctor suggested we look into surrogacy . It took some time to come around to the idea, and of course, I also had extreme sticker shock. Surrogacy can run anywhere from $50,000 to $250,000, and honestly, we couldn’t afford it. Still, it felt like my only option at that point, so I was devastated.

“What if I was your surrogate?” my mom texted me one day.

The text came out of the blue. My mom was 50 at the time. She’s a two-time Boston marathon runner and triathlete and is incredibly healthy. She is my best friend, and I’m her only daughter, so we’ve always been close. But I was still processing my emotions after the failed IUI and IVF, so I told her to drop it. Her suggestion felt like a silly, unrealistic, outlandish idea, and I didn’t even want to get my hopes up. But she was persistent and continued to remind me that she was confident she could be my surrogate.

About two months later, at a routine checkup at the fertility clinic, my mom came to support me. At the end of the exam, my doctor brought up surrogacy again, and my mom chimed in saying she had offered to be my surrogate. I was a little annoyed and embarrassed because it felt like such a crazy idea. But the doctor was clearly considering the idea and offered to run some preliminary tests.

There was never an exact moment when we decided that my mom would be my surrogate.

As she passed each health screening with flying colors (her health report looked better than mine!), we cautiously continued the process. My husband was supportive, trusting that as a very logical, realistic person, I had thought through all the outcomes. He also understood there are a lot of ways to grow a family and appreciated that this could be our path forward.

A few weeks after that initial doctor’s appointment, I saw a People magazine cover at work featuring a surrogate carrying a baby for her own son in Nebraska. I took the magazine home and contacted the mother and son. I wanted to get some answers. My husband and I even drove to Omaha to meet their physician.

All of us—my mom, my husband, and I—had to undergo an extensive psychological exam before starting the surrogacy process, meeting with a psychologist who made sure we were emotionally and mentally stable and ready for this journey. We all had to be on the same page with the right intentions. My mom and I had lawyers representing each of us (everyone had to be in legal agreement and legally protected), and they walked us through every contract, clause, and detail. We discussed all possible outcomes, including what to do in case of a medical emergency.

At this stage, my husband and I also needed to save money and wanted to support my mom throughout the entire process, so we sold our home at the end of 2019 and moved in with my parents.

Once all the screenings, evals, and paperwork were complete, we did an embryo transfer with my mom on February 25, 2020.

None of it felt real. I was emotionally in a dark place after years of infertility and loss, and to make matters worse, COVID-19 hit two weeks later. The world was shutting down, and my mom, who was already considered high risk for COVID infection due to her age, was trying to carry a pregnancy. My baby.

Throughout the entire first trimester, doctors were cautiously optimistic that the baby was developing at a normal rate, but after my history with the miscarriages, I was pessimistic. We held our breath during every appointment, scan, and test.

It wasn’t until the 20-week anatomy scan that I finally felt a wave of relief. My baby girl was growing and healthy. I was still reserved about celebrating, but I tried to let my guard down. We officially announced my mom’s pregnancy to friends and family and posted about it on social media. Of course, strangers online will always have their opinions about our unique surrogacy journey, but our family and friends only celebrated and supported the extraordinary miracle.

Throughout my mom’s pregnancy, we spent our days together. As my husband threw himself into nursery projects, my mom told me about every feeling, symptom, and craving, and I clung to each detail. It made us even closer. Her pregnancy never felt weird or awkward, and I didn’t harbor any jealousy or resentment.

Sometimes it was difficult during routine doctor's appointments since the focus was always on my mom. She was the patient, but as the mother of my baby, I sometimes wished the doctors spoke directly to me and asked questions. (Still, the staff did a great job of including my husband and myself in every conversation and never made us feel like outsiders.) I didn’t hold on to any of those feelings for long because I was just so completely and utterly grateful for my mom’s sacrifice.

My daughter was born on November 2, 2020—World Fertility Day.

She was born via an emergency C-section because doctors were concerned about her heartbeat during delivery. We were still in the throes of the pandemic, and while my doctor originally said we couldn’t go into the operating room—which I expected and made peace with—at the last minute, they let me into the room. It was the happiest day of my life.

We now live 20 minutes away from my parents, and I see my mom almost every day. We have pictures in our home of her pregnancy.

I definitely want to have another baby and recently started going through IVF again. Last year, I got pregnant, but my second daughter was born sleeping [stillborn] at 25 weeks due to a complex heart defect. And once again, I had to pull myself out of a dark hole, process my emotions, and get back on my feet to try again. I’m open to going through another surrogacy, and my mom has offered to carry for me again, but I want to keep her healthy and safe right now.

Although infertility has been the most devastating, difficult thing I’ve gone through, it’s ultimately a story of resilience. It’s financially taxing, emotionally draining, and physically challenging, but at the end of the day, it’s about how many times I get back up and keep going. My mom’s offer was the most selfless, beautiful gift. It showed me that motherhood can come in all different ways, and I carry that idea with me now.

Andi Breitowich is a Chicago-based writer and graduate student at Northwestern Medill. She’s a mass consumer of social media and cares about women’s rights, holistic wellness, and non-stigmatizing reproductive care. As a former collegiate pole vaulter, she has a love for all things fitness and is currently obsessed with Peloton Tread workouts and hot yoga.  

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The day I was born Essay

• Category: Family
• Published: 01.20.20

The scramble, the turmoil, the discompose, everyone flowing to the medical center all due to me! Very well, all that happened 18 years ago on a sunny day 30th of Summer 1995 by 04: twenty am in Östra hospital in Gothenburg. My cardiovascular system felt mom ——- provided birth to a awesome, great, amazing kid.

My mom says that I experienced head filled with hair and looked like a fur ball. With that, I was 4kg baby. My parents named me —– after my fathers friend named ——–, him and my father were very close when they lived in similar village in Jericho, Palestine, and when my father moved to Laxa, sweden, him and —– did not have the companionship they use to obtain. That is why i’m Faris. My own middle identity is ——, and that is also my fathers name.

It really is pretty much arabic tradition the sons and daughters gets the fathers brand as a midsection name. Although there are exceptions for example , my mate ——- central name is usually Peter, my personal sister —— middle term is Sanna, and my other sisters’ middle term is Ardore. I think it is pretty funny that they have swedish middle labels. My mom says she actually didn’t possess any specific cravings, yet that the girl always was craving foodstuff and never received the fat she will need to of with the amount of food your woman ate.

She said that once she awoke in the middle of the night and was wanting cheeseburges, so my dad recently bought a few taco bells for her, and once he came back she didn’t want it any more and desired an arabic dish referred to as “Mlokhie”. My dad went to the kithen to cook the dish on her and once having been done, my mom was sleeping and didn’t eat any kind of it. I used to be born previous of half a dozen children, so that you can easily say that my family is the big unoriginal arab family members.

So at my upbringing you can say that I got a lot of beatings from my cousin. When I came to be we occupied an apartement in Högsbo, and now, 18 years later on, me and my father remain living below. The first months of my life was pretty challenging for me and my parents, when I was only two weeks old I got my first illness, it was the “whooping cough”, and I spent over a month in the medical center after that, yet life proceeded and here We am, writing an essay that is more than a week later. (sorry Mats) June 28 was a uninteresting day, nothing at all special happened that working day that was worth talking about.

But just one day when i was born the Sampoong Department Store collapsed, it was located in South Korea. The collapse may be the largest peacetime disaster in South Korean language history while 502 persons died and 937 were injured. It was the deadliest building fall until the September 11 problems in Nyc. This is seriously horrible, and I had truly never heard about this accident before I used to be doing this article. Celebrity smart, my birthday was sort of dull to, the only brand I acknowledge on the list of celebrities with the same birthday because me can be Mel Creeks, and I don’t even know how I know him.

So today is sixteenth of sept, exactly 6655 days after I was born, and i also still have a head full of hair, only hoping which i don’t resemble a fur ball.

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