Process to get birth certificate for a new-born

We recently went through the process of getting a birth certificate for our baby boy! Hereby, writing this blog for the benefit future parents 🙂 Hopefully, one less thing to worry after your parenting adventure begins!

Its very simple process if you know few key things:

Things to do at the hospital:

1. Baby name – Most important thing is to finalize name of the baby. If you don’t know before delivery, I recommend deciding it in a day or so. That way hospital staff can do most of the heavy lifting and formalities and less effort for you after discharge.
2. Form – There is one small form that needs to be filled once you know the baby name. Dads! it would be your responsibility to take care of this 🙂 The person in charge of the birth certificate will reach out to fill form else you can contact yourself. Idea is to finish this form before you leave the hospital.

Point to be noted – At Kaiser (and possibly other hospitals too), work hours of staff designated for the birth certificate will be limited like till 2pm or so. It does take some time to coordinate and finish this as you will be busy with loads of other stuff too hence having a name ready asap will help.

Wait for SSN to arrive

At the hospital, you get one confirmation letter for your reference containing baby’s birth details (name, time, place etc. Hospital takes care of the process for SSN too and you would get it in the mail in a couple of weeks. Don’t know why but the staff at hospital and friends told us to wait for the further process until SSN comes. I guess getting SSN indicates that Government received the information submitted by the hospital.

Visit County Recorder office:

The next and final step is to visit child’s birth county office. The thing to note is you don’t get an actual birth certificate but get an authorized copy. The hospital should provide you with the address of county office with discharge papers. Plan your visit at follows:

1. Request authorized birth copy online:

Point to be noted: I suggest completing this small form online to save time and speed-up your turn when you visit the office.

For Santa Clara: https://scccroselfservice.org/web/wizard/COPYREQUEST201S1                                 After you submit the form, you get one reference no. which is only valid for the week or so.

2. Things to take with you when you visit county office:

• Driving id
• Reference no from step 1. to look up your application
• Fees in cash (To save additional charge for credit card)

I didn’t know so I took SSN and confirmation letter provided by Kaiser with me as well. But only above things are needed.

3. At county office:

Santa Clara office is in San Jose downtown at the following address –

Point to be noted: Santa Clara county office is in SJ downtown and surrounded by few more government buildings. There is limited public parking near building hence plan for time to find parking.

The office is the better-managed version of DMV 🙂 You will see a bunch of helpers present to assist you. If you tell them that you already completed form online then they will guide you to get token and wait for it to get called. Alternatively, there are few computers that you can use to submit the request. Once your token no. is called and you reach staff window it doesn’t take much time. You provide your driving id and make a payment based on how many copies you need.  Then after, You get authorized birth copies right away!

I hope you will found this article helpful, please post questions if any.