It was 10:00 p.m. Wednesday night. We were due to leave on our journey toward Galveston TX Friday morning. I decided it was finally time to get Tiny’s birth certificate out of the safe so I could pack it for our cruise. No big deal. That’s where we keep all the important documents. I knew it would be in there with all of our birth certificates. I got the keys, opened the safe, and started looking through all the papers.
I went through the safe quickly and didn’t find it.
Sweat.
I looked through the safe again and didn’t find it.
Panic.
It wasn’t in there.
The Man: “You remember seeing it, right? I mean, we did have one mailed, right?”
Me: “I’m 99% sure.”
“Ok,” I thought. “I’ll just look in the big safe.”
We have a bigger safe where we keep all of our old important documents that we haven’t gone through in years and really just need to burn it all but we don’t because we’re procrastinators and we keep putting it off other important documents. So, I started looking in there.
More sweat.
More panic.
It wasn’t in there either.
The Man: “You remember seeing it, right? I mean, we did have one mailed, right?”
Me: “I’m 85% sure.”
See, we booked this cruise before the baby was even born. When we were booking, Royal Caribbean wanted to know what her birthday was. We said, “We’ll let you know in a couple weeks after she arrives.” So, it wasn’t a last minute trip. We have no excuse for not looking for her birth certificate any time in the last YEAR but we didn’t. We just assumed we had it. This was going to be our tenth cruise. You would think we would know better by now.
So, I decided to look in all of my office drawers. Probably what happened was, I ordered it then never filed it. I must have stuck it in a drawer. I went through every. single. drawer. twice. It wasn’t there.
Sweating profusely.
Intense panic.
The worst case scenario starts running through my mind.
No birth certificate = no baby on the cruise.
No baby on the cruise = no mama on the cruise.
Man won’t cruise alone.
Nobody cruises.
Nobody gets a refund.
Money down the drain.
The Man: “You remember seeing it, right? I mean, we did have one mailed, right?”
Me: “I’m 50% sure. I remember sending a picture of it to your dad because her name was so cute on it.”
The Man started going through a year’s worth of text messages to his dad to find that picture (that’s why you never should delete a text thread!).
The Man: “Nope. It was a picture of her social security card.”
Me: “Oh. Right.”
The Man: [Also in panic-mode] “You remember seeing it, right? I mean, we did have one mailed, right?”
Me: “I don’t know anymore. My brain was pretty foggy back then.”
Since it was around midnight by then, I knew the only way to POSSIBLY shed some light on this problem was to call the hospital.
*Me dialing*
The Man: “Who are you calling?”
Me: “The hospital.”
The Man: “How are they going to help?”
Me: “I have no idea.”
I called the hospital and they said I needed to talk to the head nurse on duty on the labor and delivery floor.
Me: “I can’t seem to find my daughter’s birth certificate. If I’m correct, we filled out the paperwork at the hospital. Right?”
Nurse: “Yes.”
Me: “So that means you filed it, right?”
Nurse: “Yes.”
Me: “But if I’m correct, I still have to order a copy, right?”
Nurse: “Yes. If you look in the Green Folder we sent home with you, you will find all the information you need. The Green Folder will tell you exactly how to order your daughter’s birth certificate. The Green Folder also explains the costs and where the vital records office is. Just check your Green Folder.”
Me: “Ok.”
Nurse: “When was your daughter born?”
Me: “A year ago.” *hanging head in shame*
Nurse: “You need to find your Green Folder.”
For the record, I never found that “Green Folder.” Maybe they sent it home with me. Maybe they forgot. But I can guarantee you that I did NOT read it. Obviously. Apparently, I should have. However, I have had two babies at the hospital and one at home with a midwife. Once I saw how awesome having a baby at home was, the hospital drove me CRAZY more than ever. When they said, “We’ve discharged you. You may go home now. We’ve released you from prison. We will no longer bug you every 3.5 minutes through the night even though you are perfectly healthy.” I’m pretty sure me and The Man grabbed our daughter and ran. We were SO happy to get home where we could actually rest and recover. So, who knows what happened to that Green Folder.
We did a little Googling that night and found out that we could go downtown to the vital records office and obtain a copy of her birth certificate. Maybe.
Ahhhh.
So, the next morning, The Man got up early and went to the vital records office before work and got a copy. It was the best $12 we ever spent.
Here is the moral of the story (not like I have to ACTUALLY point it out. I think it’s pretty obvious but I’ll do it anyway.):
1 Don’t wait until the last minute to locate all of your important documents before a trip.
2 Make sure you order your child’s birth certificate as soon as you can.
3 Don’t wait until the last minute to locate all of your important documents before a trip.
Just so you know, for most of our cruises, we have traveled with our passports. You don’t HAVE to have a passport to cruise as long as you are leaving and returning to the same port. We were leaving from and returning to Galveston so our passports weren’t necessary. Which was great because they are expired anyway. We haven’t seen a need to get new ones yet. So, if you don’t have a passport, you can cruise with your driver’s license and your birth certificate. Royal Caribbean says that married ladies must also bring their marriage license to show the name change between their birth certificate and their driver’s license. I took my marriage license but I didn’t figure they would look at it. They didn’t. But I had it just in case.
Have a nice day, y’all!
P.S. Dear Mike from Canada,
Hopefully you remembered the name of our blog. If you did, and you’re reading this, please leave a comment. We enjoyed talking with you but we all forgot to exchange contact info! We want to be your neighbor someday. ?
