I have been wanting to write about this but a part of me didn't...The last 4 weeks I have been trying to get my daughter's Certificate of Birth Resulting in Stillbirth. As far as I knew, she was stillborn making it to 21 weeks and 5 days. I applied online at the department of vital statistics website thinking that it was a simple procedure. I received a letter from that department stating that they had NO record on my daughter. I didn't understand all of this. I called the hospital and I didn't know that the stillbirth certificate was somewhat unfamiliar to many nurses and chaplains! I found out about it through my support group friends. The city employee told me that my daughter had to be registered first meaning that her death record had to be on file before I can get a stillbirth certificate (a.k.a CBRS for short).
From there, John and I contacted the medical records and the funeral home that contracted with the hospital to cremate underweight babies. Although Joey was only 278 grams, a vital statistics employee told me that it was up to the hospital to register her. The only time registration is required would be if the baby weighed 350 grams in the state of Texas. However, we were reassured that there was nothing against the law for hospitals to register Joey at my request.
The chaplain of my hospital intervened for us yet the hospital attorney simply denied our request stating that it was not a legal requirement. It didn't make sense to me that the Vital Statistics coordinator said that this was completely legal to do BUT the attorney interpreted the law differently.
All this to say that John and I were frustrated... I was emotional in the beginning of all this. I told myself that I needed to let go of this if it was out of my control. For anyone who has PROM'ed, it's hard enough to know that our babies couldn't grow properly if we kept leaking. The state law won't acknowledge her all because of her weight, but nothing changes her value to me. I wanted anything that recognized Joey - there are so many empty pages in the scrapbook for Joey. I don't think I could ever get enough things for her to make up for the memories we were supposed to have together - Mommy, Daddy, doggie Angel, and Joey.
I just realized that today was 10 months since Joey's birth. Joey is almost ONE - Oct 9th.
We love you, sweet girl!
