Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
Nov
22
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“Is The Baby Dead?”
“Is the baby dead?” – Clerk at the Office of Vital Statistics to the mother of a five day old baby when she was attempting to get a birth certificate for her home birth.
There are 49 comments to this post.
Not sure if the Clerk is thinking that all home births result in dead babies or what the context is.
But if the baby was dead, don’t you get a death certificate and not a birth certificate?
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Jane Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 5:29 am (Quote)
It depends on which state you’re in (assuming the poster is in the US.)
If the baby was born alive and died afterward, the state issues both a certificate of birth and a certificate of death.
If the baby is stillborn, some states will issue only a death certificate; some will issue a certificate of fetal demise. And some states will issue a Certificate Of Birth Resulting In Stillbirth. For a while I was working with a group that was attempting to get legislation introduced in order to bring that to my own state.
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I wonder if the clerk was looking in the usual place for the birth certificate information that is usually sent from the hospital. When they didn’t find it, they just jumped to this rather ridiculous conclusion (If the parents are there fore a Birth Certificate).
I know at the county clerk’s office in my area (small, small town) they go into a tizzy at the mention of things like adoption records and amended birth certificates, so I can just imagine what kind of reaction “Home birth” would get. LOL
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xanthina Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 7:55 am (Quote)
With my brother’s homebirth, the clerk insisted on seeing my parent’s marriage certificate, and then tried to keep it for their records! My mom of course refused, stating over and over that they could have a copy, but that was *HER* original, and they could *NOT* keep it.
She’s still wondering why the clerk needed her marriage cert.
(this was 21 years ago)
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SculptorAlison Reply:
November 23rd, 2011 at 4:24 pm (Quote)
That reminds me of the time I went with my father to get my passport and to get his renewed. The woman kept trying to staple all the documents to his copy of his naturalization papers and he was none too pleased about it.
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I’d like to see the pink link.
When I went to get the birth certificate for my daughter after our home birth, I just filled out their form, paid my 10 bucks and they printed it right out for me. I had to jump through many hoops to get them all of the information they wanted to prove she was born in the U.S. and that I was a citizen, too, but once that was done, obtaining the certificate was easy.
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Michelle Potter Reply:
December 20th, 2011 at 5:37 pm (Quote)
I’m so jealous. It took me three years to get my daughter’s birth certificate after she was born at home. Other people in my state have told me that they have had no problem getting a birth certificate, but literally every person I spoke to at the city, county, and state level for two and a half years told me they had never heard of a parent applying for a birth certificate themselves, and didn’t think it could be done. Once I finally found the right government agency (a tiny office in Austin that only deals with delayed birth certificates), they gave me the run around for months, not answering/returning calls, ignoring letters, and even cashing my check without issuing the birth certificate. I had to get my state representative involved, and then suddenly, a couple of weeks later it was fixed.
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first time mommy had this to say,
Nov 22, 2011 @ 6:48 am (Quote)
no you ding dong. i’m getting a BIRTH certificate, not a DEATH certificate.
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My home birth midwife does all the birth certificate paperwork. I get it in the mail a few weeks later.
Sounds to me like this clerk was simply making an ASSumption and sticking in her uneducated opinion about the “dangers” of home-birth.
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I think that a planned home birth probably did not even enter this woman’s mind. Home births are common in the area I live in now, but where I grew up it would be unheard of. Even if she thought the baby was born before mom could make it to a hospital, this is really insensitive.
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Tyler had this to say,
Nov 22, 2011 @ 7:23 am (Quote)
Hey guys, can’t pink pink this one, I’m on my phone. I had just turned 18 and was trying to get a birth certificate made for the baby, not obtain one that had already been made. The first question I was asked was if the baby was dead… While I was pushing a stroller.
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Tee Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 7:54 am (Quote)
You had the baby with you and they still asked if the baby was dead? Is it wrong that I totally busted out laughing just now? I mean, please don’t think me insensitive because what they said was really stupid. I just found their stupidity to be funny this morning!
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jaed Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 7:55 am (Quote)
WTF.
Did the clerk have any explanation for the question? Was he or she just being snarky and nasty, or serious, or…? I can hardly comprehend someone putting it this insensitively if they did think you’d just lost a baby, but when the said baby is right there in front of them… what were they thinking? Zombie baby?
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Mama Wrench had this to say,
Nov 22, 2011 @ 7:48 am (Quote)
“Are you requesting a certificate of live birth?” There, I fixed it for you.
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Tyler had this to say,
Nov 22, 2011 @ 9:59 am (Quote)
They thought I had a dead baby with me… A five day dead baby. My response to the question was, “she’s right here” and I threw the Carseat up on the counter. They all gasped like they were seeing a miracle, qnd one even said, “oh my gaaawwwwd” like she just couldn’t believe it.My baby was a uc and the clerk was horrified. She told me I did not follow the proper procedure and I needed to go to a hospital. She then sat on the paperwork for my daughters birth certificate for 6 weeks, intentionally giving me the wrong papers and putting them in wrong… It was a real fight to get my daughters certificate.
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Kasondra Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 11:01 am (Quote)
It took 8 MONTHS to get my son a SSN. They kept saying that I needed something from a DOCTOR to prove identity. I got the runaround several times. It was stupid.
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Mama Wrench Reply:
November 23rd, 2011 at 7:46 am (Quote)
That’s ridiculous! With my son I just brought him in, gave them my information and got his card 2 weeks later. No big deal, I didn’t even have his birth certificate by then.
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Elizabeth Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 12:04 pm (Quote)
My 2 homebirths were unassisted, too, and WOO did that throw them for a loop. It took 4 months to get the birth certificate, which they said was FAST … apparently they’d had some take as long as a year.
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himom Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 12:22 pm (Quote)
My birth was legally unassisted, since I used an unlicensed midwife and kept her off all paperwork. It was a pain in the butt to get the paperwork right, but it only took about two months all told.
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Bonita Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 2:12 pm (Quote)
They wanted you to check into the hospital five days after the birth?! Some people are idiots.
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Michelle Potter Reply:
December 20th, 2011 at 5:41 pm (Quote)
I think they meant she was supposed to go to the hospital to get the birth certificate. I actually tried this when I was having so much trouble getting my daughter’s birth certificate, and they basically told me to get lost.
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Heather P Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 3:13 pm (Quote)
They gave me a real hassle to get my daughter’s BC after a homebirth too. I had an even harder time with the SSA. Sorry you had to deal with such idiots.
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genniemom Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 4:07 pm (Quote)
I am really sick of this. My son’s PKU got sent back twice for “mistakes.” After the second one, I just had my pediatrician do it instead, and lo and behold, it went through! I have no idea what these people think that they are doing. This in no way will discourage me from having a homebirth. All it did was punish my baby by having him get poked three times!
The attitudes of family, friends, and acquaintances was at least expected.
“Nothing went wrong?” “You didn’t have to go to a hospital?” and when I said my first son was born in a hospital, the nurse I was talking to was quick to assume that he was a homebirth transfer. Nope. Most homebirths are not transfers, but many of them are subsequent births after bad experiences in hospitals!
And I realize that I am a minority in having a homebirth, but why does that mean that I should be allowed to be persecuted? Last I checked, that was sort of frowned on in our country. Sorry about the rant. It was fairly easy to get a birth certificate for my son. I’m in WI and I had to have my midwife fill out paperwork, and had a home visit from a state public health nurse. The nurse asked me questions and did a gestational age estimate on my baby. I felt like just because I had a homebirth, they were assuming that looking hard enough would turn up criminal activity. I have no idea how anyone would be able to get a birth certificate with an unassisted birth.
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LIsa Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 9:37 pm (Quote)
This just makes no sense to me. What difference does it make to social security and the people giving birth certificates where you had your baby? It’s a living human being, therefore it needs to have proper documentation.
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Jade Reply:
November 23rd, 2011 at 12:07 am (Quote)
Because we might not have had a baby at all, we probably stole it 
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jaed Reply:
November 23rd, 2011 at 7:18 am (Quote)
It’s just the bureaucratic mindset. There is a box labeled “Attending Doctor”, so there has to be an attending doctor. Another one is labeled “Hospital”, so a hospital must be involved. Otherwise there will be nothing to put in the boxes, and the bureaucratic mind does not handle that sort of thing well. Or at all.
Put another way, it’s because almost all births were in the hospital for decades while all these forms were being designed (and for the rare exceptions, the mother and child were rushed to a hospital for the “emergency”). Because of that, the process as it evolved depends on a hospital sending over paperwork, and since the hospital is deemed a trustworthy institution, there are no procedures in place to verify the birth. (Which they really do need for an identity document, even if it’s simply the parents’ signatures on an affidavit.)
It’s not so much that the people can’t conceive of birth outside a hospital as that the paperwork can’t.
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I had heaps of trouble gettting a birth certificate for my homebirth baby too. It took nearly 12 months of getting statutory declarations etc to state that I was pregnant, that I had the baby, that the baby was alive, that i really didn’t have it ion hospital, that I didn’t go to hospital afterwards…I swore at births deaths and marriages A LOT
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Insensitive, but I can kind of understand this…here in Wyoming (where midwife-assisted homebirth was illegal until April this year) You have to bring the baby with you to the Clerk’s office for a certificate of live birth. If the baby wasn’t with her, the clerk was probably wondering if a still birth certificate was needed.
All homebirths here were assumed to be unassisted. I’m interested to see what the paperwork will be like now for my baby due next March.
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Laura Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 7:43 pm (Quote)
Even so, “Was the baby born alive, or dead?” would apply.
And – according to the OP above (Tyler, not pink-linked, she was on her phone) – the baby was in a stroller, right there with her! LOL.
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Mama Wrench Reply:
November 23rd, 2011 at 7:52 am (Quote)
Well, besides the fact that the baby was WITH her, in that case the appropriate question would have been “Do you require a certificate of live birth?” Even a simple “I’ve never handled this situation before, so bear with me…” caveat would have been much more appropriate.
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Chelsea Reply:
November 23rd, 2011 at 8:12 am (Quote)
Yah I didn’t see a pink link so hadn’t read the OP’s further info. I’m not arguing that the clerk wasn’t rude. Just that it was a legitimate question if they didn’t see the baby…could have worded it better though.
I also have had 2 UCs and am planning my third. The Vital Statistics office is useless. It was far easier to go to the records office in the hospital baby in arms and get the paperwork from there, then just bring the completed paperwork back to the hospital to be submitted with all the other births. I got my kids’ social security cards before their birth certificates came.
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Lisa had this to say,
Nov 22, 2011 @ 8:20 pm (Quote)
Wow. I’m sorry for what every one had to go through for a SSN and/or birth certificate. I had a home birth and my midwife did the paperwork for the SSN and I applied for the birth certificate and had no problems with either. I guess AZ is a little m
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Lisa had this to say,
Nov 22, 2011 @ 8:20 pm (Quote)
Wow. I’m sorry for what every one had to go through for a SSN and/or birth certificate. I had a home birth and my midwife did the paperwork for the SSN and I applied for the birth certificate and had no problems with either. I guess AZ is a little more home birth friendly than I thought.
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Don’t want this issue? don’t have your baby at home! There problem solved
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Tee Reply:
November 23rd, 2011 at 12:00 am (Quote)
It can be so hard to read tone over the internet so forgive me for having to ask… are you being serious or sarcastic?
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Jade Reply:
November 23rd, 2011 at 12:04 am (Quote)
In light of recent posts, I would say they are serious.
And to the anonymous poster, I would rather have the problem I had with my second child and have my baby at home than my first birth, get a birth certificate easily and subject my baby and myself to a dangerous hospital birth
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Tee Reply:
November 23rd, 2011 at 12:17 am (Quote)
I guess I need to pay closer attention as to poster’s names. I try really hard not to jump to assumptions and instead just ask people to clarify. If you’re right and this person was serious… best to keep my mouth shut.
And for what it’s worth, I really appreciate your attitude about being willing to go through the headache of it all for the sake of having a peaceful birth.
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jaed Reply:
November 23rd, 2011 at 7:27 am (Quote)
This particular troll doesn’t exactly have a name; he or she seems too stupid to handle a simple web form (as well as having characteristic difficulties with spelling and punctuation), so the name appears as the default “Your Name” instead of a pseudonym.
Makes me miss Robert. He was a troll, but at least he was literate.
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Nicci P Reply:
November 23rd, 2011 at 8:16 am (Quote)
*sigh* I’m gutted the trolls are back. I love this site. Also, agreed with the illiteracy issue. Maybe “Your Name” should spend their time learning about punctuation instead of trolling what should be a safe place for people who have been let down and badly hurt by people they trusted.
But anyway, lets see, would I prefer months of therapy and years of coping with PTSD (which I had from my eldest son’s birth) or would I prefer a couple of extra steps that it took to get the birth certificate for my youngest son?
Well, as fun as it was being unable to sleep, waking up screaming several nights a week, and all the other lovely things that go along with PTSD, and as much as I enjoy having facial tics/twitches these days, I think I’ll stick with unassisted birthing, thanks.
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When I had to get a birth certificate for my home-birthed baby, thankfully I went to our homebirth friendly ped first. Their office gave me a notarized piece of paper that apparently magically validated my pregnancy in the eyes of the county, and allowed us to get the BC and SSN with no hassle.
Not that the ped actually saw me during my pregnancy, but, you know, they’re not STUPID and when I show up with an obvious postpartum belly, leaking boobs, and a 5-day old baby, it’s not hard to connect the dots, right?
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I had trouble getting my son’s birth certificate. Despite the midwife filling out all the proper paperwork, the town in which we lived didn’t have a hospital, so they almost never processed birth certificate paperwork, so they had no idea what they needed. They tried to tell me that I had to have my husband sign a father’s acknowledgement of paternity. Not only do you not need to do that if you’re married, that state is a presumptive paternity state. Had he not been the father he would have had to prove that, not the other way around.
When I went to get his birth certificate, I brought him with me. He was around a month old at this point, and it was December. The person in the office there, after commenting on my adorable, tiny baby, looked through her set of birth certificates and asked, “Was the baby born in June?” Weren’t we just talking about how he’s a month old? Doin’ the time warp, baby!
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WTF? I have no words…
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