Birth certificates

I didn't think I could get more stressed out today, but then I did!

Because I'm all about stretching myself, pushing my limits. 

I'm trying to pack today while also finishing up a big chunk of my thesis proposal. And flying stresses me out anyway. And I need to, like, make sure everything is ready for the kids while I'm gone (it's not). And...just...I'm really good at stressing out about things...to the point of hardly being able to function...

And then I decided to pull out Phoebe's birth certificate. 

Because some airlines like to see proof of age for lap infants. And also because it's a good idea to have, like, identification while traveling. So I get out our Very Important Papers and start sifting through them.

Immunization documents. Passports. Marriage certificate. Birth certificates. Here we go!

Andrew's certificate of live birth. 

Another copy of Andrew's birth certificate.

Nancy's certificate of live birth.

Nancy's consular report of birth abroad. 

Rachel's certificate of live birth. And a copy!

Because we're super-duper on-top-of-things parents and ordered two copies for her.

Miriam's شهادة الميلاد.

Miriam's consular report of birth abroad.

Benjamin's birth certificate.

Zoë's birth certificate.

Alexander's birth certificate.

And...

I blinked into the now-empty folder. 

"Uh, Andrew!!" I panicked, and he knows how stressed out I am, so he ran upstairs to help me finish going through our Most Important Papers and then...we realized...that maybe we'd just never even seen her birth certificate before. Neither of us remembered having done so...which was a problem. 

So we went to our box of Secondarily Important Papers and found in Phoebe's medical file the, uh, "confirmation of live birth" from the hospital that we were supposed to mail to the county records office (along with a check) so that they can send us her birth certificate. Neat.

We don't have a birth certificate for Phoebe. 

And I'm flying with her tomorrow. 

And there's a lovely note (in bold) telling us that we need to request a birth certificate before her first birthday. Which, I mean, at least we're good there!!

And after staying on hold with Delta for a not insignificant amount of time, I verified that they do not request a birth certificate to prove a lap infant's age until they're over a year old (this is, the representative on the phone told me, according to Delta's "Bible"), and TSA doesn't require ID for children who are flying domestically (which we are, even though (weirdly) in my heart of hearts I feel like if I am flying home I should be flying internationally?? So I panicked for a minute before I realized I won't be crossing any borders). So, I'm bringing a copy of her confirmation of live birth with me to the airport and Andrew will file for us to get a birth certificate (since technically that's his job, since I did the hard part of delivering the baby, but it took us several weeks to get the hospital confirmation letter at all, as we recall—because we didn't get the confirmation letter until after the deadline to add Phoebe to our insurance so we had to battle them to get her added and then it was still a while after that that the hospital certificate came—and then it just fell through the cracks, I guess).

Anyway, we should be good to go. 

Fingers crossed.