I was at the passport office today renewing my passport and had to show prrof of my birth certificate. While I was doing this, I realized I never applied to get my son's birth certificate! He is 1 now! I feel like such a terrible Mom. :/ What can I do to get one for him??? I read on the passport app that a birth certificate issued within one year of birth was needed. I don't want him running into problems later so I NEED to get this done!
Its possible that you misunderstood...you do not need to apply for a passport within one year of birth....we just got my four year old his first passport with no problems. Warning.....it is taking a loooong time to get passports after applying. :)
You can get one at any county courthouse within the county within which your child was born. Just go in, pay your money & they print you one out. No hoops!
D.
The hospital should have registered his birth with the state when he was born. You can get a certified copy of his birth certificate whenever you want. For my daughter we went to the Denton Cty offices and got her certified copy there even though she was born in FW. My husband was born in Amarillo and I in San Antonio, we both went to the Grapevine city offices and got copies of our birth certificates a few years ago. Print out the application online and look online to find out where you can go get the birth certificate. Both times it took us less than 10 minutes to get them.
Don't feel like a bad mom for waiting, I had no intentions of getting my daughters birth certificate (she's almost 2 now) until she was actually going to need it for school. We ended up getting it though when we decided to get her a passport this summer for our cruise.
you probably wont actually need it until you are registering him for school...but you can search birth certificates & the state he was born in & it will give you office locations, & the cost, & also mail in information if you just want to send off for it.
You especially want to do this soon, b/c you can't get his social security number without a birth certificate, and you can't claim him as a dependant and get the the EIC credit on your tax return either.
Call up your hospital he was delivered at and they will tell you where to go. They should have had you sign the info there after he was born. Then get his social security card started as well.
Good luck! Even though I applied for my son's card when he was born, it took me over a year to finally get it, b/c they "lost" it several times, and I had to keep going to the hospital to get documentaion.
You just go to the county court house and pick one up. You don't even have to go to the county he was born in. Because of the state database you are able to pick the bc up anywhere. My kids were born in Rockwall County and I picked mine up in Hunt. No worries!
You can get a form from the Bureau of Vital Statistics (the hospital my kiddos were born in gave me one), fill it out, include the appropriate fee and a self addressed stamped evelope, and they will mail it right to your house. Otherwise, you can go to the Bureau's office (there is one in downtown FW), fill out the form, pay the fee and get it there.
I went to the Department of State website to look at what is required for a passport and what it says about birth certificates is this:
"NOTE: A certified birth certificate has a registrar's raised, embossed, Impressed or multicolored seal, registrar's signature, and the Date the certificate was filed with the registrar's office, which must be within 1 year of your birth"
That means the birth needs to be registered with the state within a year of his birth, NOT that your copy needs to be from within a year of his birth. Think about it--people lose things, there are fires, etc. Relax, you don't need it right away.
Anyway, here is the link to get one: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/howto/w2w/texas.htm
You are not a bad mom I am. LOL. I didn't even bother to get my sons birth certificate until last year and the only reason I did it then was because I had to enroll him in school. So yeah that is bad. But since you live in Dallas all you have to do is go down to the records building in Downtown Dallas and request a copy of it or there is a building in Grand Prairie that you can go to. It is off Main street. (this is only if your son was born in Dallas County) If it was somewhere else just google records building for the county and I'm sure you will find it. Good luck.
Ok so if you had your son in a hospital all you need to do is request a copy. Take your old sweet time about this. It's not a big deal. When you request a birth certificate you are simply getting a COPY of what the state has on record. You can get as many coppies of that as you would like. I did not get either of my boys certificates until right before we moved. It is easier to get coppies of the certificates if you live in the sate where it was issued. My husband and his siblings have had a hard time getting coppies of there birth certificates as adults, but they still have been able to do it. I would not recomend waiting that long. :) My parents acctually lost mine and then had to get a new one. Later they found the first one and now I have 2. It is ok you are not a bad mom.
