The Office of Vital Statistics

March 18

Today I went to the office of vital statistics in Frankfort to get copies of Madeline's birth and death certificates.  We need them to get our taxes done.  I had planned to request them last Fall so they could just mail them, but I could never bring myself to do it.  It takes 4-6 weeks (according to their paperwork) to get them in the mail and at this point that's too long, so I had to go in person.  In all honesty I've been putting it off.  I didn't want to do it.  But with April 15th quickly approaching I had no choice.  It's actually a good thing because without the deadline I would have kept putting it off.

The experience wasn't awful.  Not great, but not awful.  You fill out the forms for what you're requesting and then turn them in and wait.  The birth certificate form was easy and all information I knew off the top of my head.  The death certificate form was more difficult.  They wanted to know the attending physician and the funeral home (along with address).  I wasn't sure if the attending physician would be the doctor who delivered her or the high risk doctor who took her to officially confirm she no longer had a heartbeat.  I just put both down.  As for the funeral home, we have that information, but I didn't know I'd need it (in hind sight I maybe should have, it makes sense) so I didn't bring it with me.  I called the hospital to talk to the nurse who runs our support group and ask her.  Luckily she was working and told me which one it was (they use the same one for all of the babies that they bury).  I'm thankful she was able to help.  They most likely could have still found it without that information, but it may have taken longer.

In all I was probably there for 45 minutes to an hour.  It wasn't bad.  The office itself is kind of dark and depressing, but I was already in a reserved mood so it didn't really matter.  Overall it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.  It was more surreal than anything.  It was hard to wrap my mind around the fact that I was picking up the birth and death certificates of my daughter.  There was a part of each form asking for the relationship of the person requesting the form to the person on the form.  I wrote "Mother."  It's the first time I've written that on a form.  I've thought of myself as a mother and have written it in this blog, but never in something official.  It's hard to describe the feeling that came over me as I wrote it.  Especially thinking about the fact that I'm pregnant with Madeline's little sister too.  I tried to disconnect myself from the process for the most part to protect myself emotionally, but I couldn't block anything out when I wrote "Mother."

I'm glad that overall it wasn't too bad (I think part of that is also because it wasn't so soon after she died, back in the Fall I wouldn't have been able to go in person) and that it's done.  Now we have copies for our taxes and for ourselves in case we ever need it again.