Mothering Forum banner

getting the birth certificate

96K views 184 replies 132 participants last post by  lamama2baek 
#1 ·
Hello, everyone! We've got a lot of information spread over a lot of threads, maybe we can start consolidating it into one place. I'll start with Oregon.

First, you want to call the Vital Records Department in Portland and ask for paperwork for registering an unattended birth. If you get someone who doesn't seem to know what to do with you, ask to speak to someone else or call back -- it's a fluke, they do this all the time, and have a very specific protocol for it.

You have until 10 months of age to register a birth. Call the Vital Records office and ask them to send you the paperwork for registration and affidavits (be sure and ask them for a SSN form as well, if you want to do that concurrently -- I hear the SSN office can make a lot of hassle for you if you try to do it later.) In the case of a birth in which there was a midwife who perhaps arrived too late, you can simply have her do the paperwork, but please be aware that this will skew the statistics in favor of midwife-attended birth. In the case of a birth you want to register as unassisted, you will simply put yourself or "no one" or your husband's name in the birth attendant field. You will also need to get two affidavits from people swearing that you gave birth, and those people will have to get them notarized. You do not need proof of pregnancy.

From 10 months of age to the seventh birthday, you will have to do a "delayed filing". This is similar to a regular filing, except that before they will send you the registration materials, you must go through the process of proving that no birth has yet been registered in your child's name. They will send you a birth and death order form, which you fill out with your child's name and your name and address and send back to them with $20. They will send the form back to you notarized and signed by a clerk saying that no such registration exists. Then you will call the Vital Records office again, tell them that you are doing a delayed filing for a non-attended homebirth and that you have the notarized birth and death order form, and they will send you the rest of the paperwork. When you've got that all ready to go, you'll send it all back to the Vital Records office. It sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is, it's reallly very straight forward.

After the seventh birthday, you will have to go to court to register a birth. It involves all the same paperwork, you just have to get a judge to okay it. I have a friend who did this and everything went fine, although she said it was very stressful having to go before the judge, not knowing if he was going to give them a hard time or not.
 
See less See more
#29 ·
Just in case anybody's in Spain, Europe, this is what you need:

You need to fill in 2 forms, one is a questionaire asking you all about the birth and one is for the birth register. The former actually asks you if the birth was attended and, if so, if the attendant had a medical qualification (i.e. unassisted or non-medically assisted birth is quite legal). The second form (a yellow one) needs to be signed by a medical person either based on pre- or post-partum examination. This is merely to ensure that the baby is yours and hasn't been adopted illegally or even kidnapped. So if you've had an unassisted birth in Spain and your friend happens to be a doctor or nurse and is happy to vouch that the baby is yours then s/he can simply sign the form (plus give her medical registration number) and voila! you get your birth certificate. If you don't know anybody, you can simply ask a gynocologist to examine you before your postpartum period is over to assure him/herself that you've recently given birth. Especially if the doctor is a private doctor (as opposed to a Spanish NHS one) s/he'll mostly likely be happy to help. It's really quite easy to have an unassisted birth in Spain.
 
#31 ·
PHP Code:
Code:
[CODE]<span style="color:#000000;"><span style="color:#0000BB;">Does an u</span><span style="color:#007700;">/</span><span style="color:#0000BB;">s pic can work </span><span style="color:#007700;">as </span><span style="color:#0000BB;">proof of pregnancy</span><span style="color:#007700;">, <br></span> </span>
[/CODE]

good question. could u just get a letter from the place that did th U/S to prove pregnancy?

as far as surrogacy, what are KY's laws on that? r u taking the baby to a doctor after the birth? maybe since the baby will be born at it's home you can use a piece of their mail. the rules are really wishywashy if u ask me.

best of luck!
 
#32 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by reducereuserecycle View Post
as far as surrogacy, what are KY's laws on that? r u taking the baby to a doctor after the birth? maybe since the baby will be born at it's home you can use a piece of their mail. the rules are really wishywashy if u ask me.

best of luck!
KY really doesn't have any laws regarding traditional surrogacy. My IM will have to do a step parent adoption after he is born. I'm not sure if they plan to take him to the doc or not (they aren't going to circ or vax, but I don't know about "well baby" visits.) But I realized after I asked that the bio dad lives there and obviously he will be going on the birth cert so I'm assuming his proof of residence should count.
 
#33 ·
PHP Code:
Code:
[CODE]<span style="color:#000000;"><span style="color:#0000BB;">Im assuming his proof of residence should count</span><span style="color:#007700;">. <br></span> </span>
[/CODE]

i hope so. if he is a witness & the birth takes place at his residence & he is the father then surely that will work. I think KY needs a better system for birth certificates. it is just unsettling to hear one thing then 5 minutes later hear something different.

They said I had to take dd to a doctor to prove live birth. I kept telling them that I was not going to take dd to a doctor (she was already about 2 months old anyhow) and they said I had to and I said, "I am not trying to be rude, but how can a doctor prove she was born alive to me? I could be borrowing a baby from a friend and take it to a doctor and that doctor wouldn't know if I birthed it or not just by looking at it." They finally got my drift and made some more phone calls and that is when they arrived at the notion of the notarized affidavits from DH and me.

I am dreading next time when I am not going to get a proof of pregnancy from the health dept. I don't really know how I'll prove pregnancy because I really don't think I'll record the birth.
 
#34 ·
In Missouri it is illegal for anyone other than a certified nurse midwife to attend a home birth and we had one from Kansas. She, of course, could not put her name on the form, so it was as though the birth was unattended. We had to call the office for vital statistics (I think that was what it was called) in Jefferson City and request an application for live birth. Our midwife gave us the number, but I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to find on the internet or by calling information. we didn't have any problems from what I remember. Then we just filled out the form with our names, date and place of the birth, etc. and on the back we had to have two notarized signatures of people who knew that the baby was alive (didn't have to witness the birth) and then we sent it back (with a $15 fee for a copy). The only problem was that I put the my whole name on the form, but signed it with my normal signature, which is a shortened version of my name. They sent it back to us to correct and all we had to do was include a note on what happened. As far as I remember, it was very simple and we didn't get any hassles at all. In fact, they were very friendly, which is surprising for a state that really frowns upon homebirths.

Kansas seems a LOT more complicated, though. I wonder if we can just use someone else's address and get one from MO for this one too........?

My son was born in Arkansas and we had a midwife who sent in the form. They were (and maybe still are?) very accepting of homebirths (our midwife was a lay, not certified)and the laws seem to be very lax regarding all the forms and stuff. But as for doing it yourself, I am not sure!

Annah
 
#35 ·
When I called about Idaho I was told an u/s would work (for proof of pregnancy) but that it had to have all the info up in the corner (like the clinic name and what not). I would imagine that if you altered an old picture or anything and they thought it was fishy they would call the place you got it at to double check.
 
#37 ·
In Massachusetts I needed a notarized statement from myself and my partner stating to the facts of the birth, i.e date, time, place, sex of child, and the name of child. I also needed the homebirth worksheet and proof of residence, and marriage since I am married. Technically for a UC you need to do it within 40 days, but I was a few week over that and had no problems.

The woman who I called at the vital statistics dept. tried to make me provide a notarized statement from my ped(which didn't see him until 6 weeks of age), and from my prenatal care provider(whom I stopped seeing at 20 weeks). I didn't furnish either of those things, and I still got the birth cert.

FWIW they didn't know what to do with the certifier section, since there was no midwife there, in the end my partner was listed as certifier.
 
#39 ·
We just called the MN Dept. of Health, they sent an out of hospital birth packet- and you fill it out. Your 'proof of pregnancy' can be an affidavit that is noterised stating mama was pg. and in the state of MN when she delivered a live infant (this is what we did- they include the sheet in the OutOfHospitalBirthPacket) OR you can have a note with Dr.'s or clinic's letterhead comfirming pregnancy. We did all this 2 weeks after the birth, but I am sure you can get the packet before. Easy cheesy...
 
#44 ·
In my county in Illinois, you just show up with the baby and the father (or not, I suppose, if he is out of the picture) to the county courthouse and fill out the paperwork. I think you have a year, and then things get more complicated. I didn't need anything notarizied, no proof of pregnancy, nothing external. I phone the Vital Stats dept before the birth and asked for the paperwork I'd need to register a home birth. The woman on the phone said, "will you have a midwife or not?" and didn't seem at all fazed when I said no. (There is extra paperwork if a midwife is involved).
 
#45 ·
I UCed in bahia, brasil, and getting the bc was very easy.

In the village registry office, we needed to show
-proof of pg, but a letter from the nurse in the local health clinic was enough.
-parents ID *each parent must have ID with both of their parent's names, standard in brazil, but odd for foreigners. since our passports were sufficient ID, but didn't have our parents' names, we went to the local magistrate and made a declaration to him, he made us an official document
-proof of live birth (we just showed them the baby).
-witness to the birth (we got a friend to come in and say she was there)

That was it. They filled in our details into a massive book, typed the birth cert on a typewriter (manual!) stamped it, and handed it over.

If our meagre Portuguese wouldn't have slowed us down, the whole thing would have taken 1/2 hour.

Incedentally, on the birth certificate, in the "place of birth" space, its written "born on the public field on street xyz in the village of..."
I think since DD was actually born on the village soccer field, it made things take longer, just coz the bureaucrats were interested in the story. But they wrote it on the birth certificate
 
#46 ·
I UC'd in Colorado, and they wanted two notorized affadavits stating I was pregnant (or proof of prenatal care) and my son's medical records. I also had a report from when I went to L&D for the placenta that proves I gave birth the day I claim.
 
#48 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by KariM View Post
Any info for Wisconsin?
Yeah - I just called the vital records department of Wisconsin,

Quote:
Telephone: For automated assistance 24 hours a day, please call (608) 266-1371. To contact our service counter during the hours of 8:00 A.M. to 4:15 P.M. (C.S.T.), Monday through Friday, please call (608) 266-1373.
I asked for "information on registering an unattended birth" - the man asked if there was going to be a licensed midwife or physician attending, I said no - and he was completely non-judgmental. He transfered me to a woman, after telling her what I needed - and she asked for my address, very polite - and she said she'd send it out this afternoon. She wished me well, and all in all it took 2 minutes, and was completely harmless.

I'm actually really surprised at how harmless it was.
She said there was a box to check on the form to request a SSN.

I'm flabbergasted.

PM me if you ever want to have coffee. They're aren't too many of us here.
 
#49 ·
DuPage County, IL - You call the Health Department (vital records) instead of the county clerk for home births. 630-221-7381.

You can't get the packet until after the baby's born (why, oh why? I guess because they don't like you to plan ahead for unattended?). But she said after filling it out and bringing it in, they'll type it up (takes 45 mins), and you'll need to have both parents there to sign the BC. She said there will also be a third-party form in the packet, but wouldn't tell me anything else ("it's all in the packet," she said). I'll update more after the bugger's born, I guess!
 
#51 ·
For NH, I just asked a friend and this is what she shared with me: Call Vital Stats in Concord and they will send paperwork to your town clerk. Then you go in and fill it out, and your town clerk sends it back. My friend said all they required for proof was the baby. A couple of weeks later you'll get your birth cert.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top