To give birth at home; what happens next?

The baby has arrived, the hardest part is over, right?

You might think that it is the birth that should be the hardest, but for me it was actually taking up the fight with the “authorities” afterwards that was the most stressful, when you just want to enjoy being with the child and rest.

We probably thought it would be easier than it was. The day after the birth, we talked on the phone with a midwife who sent a home-made form she usually uses to register children born at home with her support. A form where it is announced that a LIVING boy / girl has been born this and that time, all the mother's information and we also added testimonies and signatures from those who were present.

The different paths for a registration after delivery can usually be as follows:

1. You give birth in a hospital and they register the birth of the child.

2. You have a midwife attending your homebirth who registers the baby when he/she is born.

3. You give birth at home / in the car / elsewhere but go directly to the hospital afterwards for check-up and care, they register the child at the hospital.

4. You give birth at home, unassisted, and do not go to the hospital afterwards, you can (try) to register the birth yourself.

We sent the paper to the tax office and called a week later to see if it had arrived and how the case went. The woman on the phone replied that they had not received any such paper and she did not find a case when she searched for my social security number, moreover it was completely wrong to do so and such a paper would not be approved in any case.

According to her, we would both have to go to a tax office together with little Ivar, bring our ID documents, the maternity certificate and all the mother's information on a piece of paper. Simply show the boy to the employees in the office, think Simba in the Lion King...

The same day we spoke to this woman on the phone, a letter arrives in the mail from another caseworker at the tax office who started a case based on the information we sent in last week, so the paper had arrived and there was a case… What are they doing over there? The letter said about the same things she said on the phone, go to an office and then send all those papers to her again.

The next day we collected all the paperwork and went to the tax office, 1.5 hours away. Outside stands a guard who will make sure that there are not too many people in the room due to the scamdemic. It doesn’t feel so good to be going around the city with a newborn baby in this weird time. This was all happening in the end of march 2020, when nobody knew much about what was going on.

The woman in the office sees the boy, testifies with a note that she has seen a child, collects the maternity certificate and my information with testimonies and takes copies of the ID documents, everything is put in an envelope and sent to the administrator we received a letter from. Nice to get it done, maybe there will be some order now so that we can also apply for parental benefit and get child allowance. An obvious problem with this is that we could have actually taken any child into the office and shown to them. There is no evidence whatsoever that Ivar is Ivar in this situation.

A week later, the next letter arrives in the mail from another administrator who says that they must have a certificate from the healthcare unit, we do not understand because we sent my maternity certificate in the mail. After another conversation with the “tax-authorities” about what they really want, it appears that the maternity certificate that we sent in was not enough because it only testified that I was pregnant, not that I actually had a child. Why in the world do you not clarify this from the beginning then? How can I know that there is another maternity certificate than the one I already received?

We must therefore send in a certificate from the hospital where a midwife or doctor certifies and testifies that the child has been pushed out of my uterus, a person without a doctor's title cannot do this, because that is for some reason, not enough. We point out what a stupid rule this is and that it does not work in this case, no one in the healthcare has actually been involved and seen that a child has been born, however, we have sent in testimonies from those who were involved, signatures, phone numbers and so on, isn’t that enough? Think of all the other occasions that testimony applies, why not now? The administrator only says "this is the rules, contact the healthcare for help".

The healthcare peoples gets a headache, our maternity center nurse says that of course she believes that I have given birth to a child, but at the same time she cannot testify to it because then she is lying, because she was not present when it happened. There we have it, how can the doctors certify that a child was born when they were not present? Our witnesses were present and saw it happen, but they are apparently not good enough for the authority.

Our maternity center nurse continues to think about solutions and finally she books us in with a doctor who knows who we are and who we are familiar with, bring ID and the child, so she can write a few lines that she has met a child. The problem with this solution is still that we could borrow any child and bring along to the meeting, how can the doctor know that it is ours? The fact that we also do not want to go to the hospital with our newborn child due to scamdemic hysteria, contributes to our reluctance to choose this alternative. Everything feels absurd.

Mathias, who is angry that the “tax-authorities” have such rigid rules and that they do not work in cases like this, calls and talks to another administrator who finally says that her boss should call us after many repetitions that "it says so in the rules" , yes we know, the thing is we want to make it clear that it does not work properly in cases like this, so what should we do? We wait all day and finally the same woman calls back and says that she has discussed with her boss and that they have now registered Ivar, he has a social security number. The feeling was kind of “we do it like this, this time, but do not do it again.”

So, I do not really know, did they realise that the rules did not work for us, did they make an exception due to the scamdemic or something else or did they not have the strength to keep arguing with a constantly questioning Mathias?!

Update: We ended the original text with this paragraph:

If there are going to be more children here at Talasbuan, we will probably have to think beforehand about how to handle the registration of the child, I cannot bear this carousel again, why should something so natural become so complicated.

This is very interesting. After learning much about the illusion of authority and natural law lately. We now know there is nothing natural about the procedure to “register” a child. This explains the hardships we had with registering Ivar, because we did not follow their ritual to make Ivar a “person”. If we would have known this then, perhaps we would not have registered our son. At the time, the parental benefits from the so called state was very helpful for us, since we where in the beginning of unlearning that we are victims and just started to stand on our own legs.