Birth certificates for babies born too soon.

This is a topic that is going around and around a lot of the angel mummy sites/groups at the moment. I think there has been a story in a soap where a baby has been born before the date of viability and it has not been allowed a birth certificate. It has bought up a lot of hurt within the angel community.

A baby born after 20 weeks but before 24 weeks is classed as a late miscarriage but after 24 weeks the baby is a still birth.

A lot of angel parents and their friends want changes to the system of issuing official certificates for registering the birth and death. A lot feel that as they have to give birth to an actual baby (before 24 weeks) then that baby should be recognised with an official certificate and registered. They also want a still-born baby to have both birth and death certificates rather than just a stillbirth certificate.

This is a controversial view but I believe the current system is a good one and there is no need for major change. While a still-born baby is born, the death may have occurred many days/weeks before this actual time. How can you issue an official document when you are unable to pinpoint time of death. I think the stillbirth certificate that it issued is a perfectly good way of registering the baby. It shows that the baby never took a breath and it is registered in a slightly different way to a live birth but the baby is still official.

When it comes to a late miscarriage I think that as the baby probably wouldn’t have survived outside the womb then it shouldn’t be issued with a birth or death certificate but I do believe that these births should be recorded in some way and the parents given a way of showing this. I think if there was a national register of these late miscarriages then we may be able to work on stopping so many of them happening.

As my Milo showed signs of life when he was born he was issued a normal birth certificate and then when he passed away aged 21 weeks old we were issued a normal death certificate.

If we were in a different position with the loss of my Milo then I might feel different about the issuing of birth/death certificates to late miscarriage babies but I just think that sadly the babies would have had a very low chance of surviving when born at that gestation and as so should be given their own way of being registered.