Ever since I got my legal birth certificate for a passport 18 yrs ago, I have suspected that I have a long lost brother or sister. One of boxes on the birth certificate says “prior delivieries to mother, do not include this birth.” And it says ‘2’.
I have one older sister. She indicates that her birth certificate, from same city, same hospital, same doctor, indicates that Mom had one prior delivery to her birth.
Mom died a long time ago, and both my sister’s and my relationship with Dad is tenuous at best. I have asked Dad and he thinks it is a typo, or it is counting Mom’s miscarriage as a delivery. A long time ago, Mom did tell me that she had one miscarriage before Sis was born. And Mom was the type to shelter this information from my sister and me although if we had asked her, I think she would have told me the truth…
The birth certificate clearly says “Prior Deliveries to Mother, do not include this birth”
After watching tonight’s Law and Order, it occurred to me that this ‘possible’ sibling could have been mentally retarded and be a ward of the state. My father is definitely capable of hiding this from my sister and me.
As I indicated, my sister and I were born in the same city, but Mom and Dad lived in three different states before we were born. Any relatives, friends that might know anything have passed away, as my Dad is the last living member of that generation. I was born in 1961 and my sister was born in the mid 50’s.
If you are wondering why my parents lived so many places, he worked for the federal government.
Is there anyway a miscarriage would be counted a delivery?
What would be a cost effective way to find out if I have another sibling?
FWIW even if it was retarded sibling (unlikely) they are quite probably long dead as retarded kids (generally) have other physical defects and tend to have quite short lives, esp retarded kids born 50-60 years ago. Whether still born or retarded your chances of fining a live sibling are almost nil based on what you’ve represented.
It might have been, depending on when it occured and what legal definition, if any, your state of birth had at the time concerning miscarriage versus stillbirth. If your mother’s first pregnancy ended at 24 weeks gestation, for example, there would have been no way to save the baby’s life at that time and the event may have been widely described as a miscarriage, but it may have been legally counted as a stillbirth, and therefore a delivery.
For that matter, the definition of “delivery” as used by the authority that issued birth certificates in your state might have specifically included the end of any known pregnancy, even if that pregnancy ended in a first-trimester miscarriage.
I think the first thing you need to do, if you intend to investigate this, is to determine what your state considered a “delivery” at the time your birth certificate was issued. You can probably just send them a letter and ask - it is very unlikely to be the first time they’ve had the question!
I had a somewhat similar situation. I thought I was the first born, but when I was about age 30 an extended relative accidentally leaked that my parents had had a prior child. The birth would have been the mid 50s. That was very shocking; I and my siblings had had no inkling of anything like this.
It seems my Mom caught the flu or something similar just a few days before the delivery & the baby was born normally, but with a massive case of flu/pnuemonia/??? and only lived a couple of days. He was buried in the city where he was born. This was where Dad was on a temporary assignement for work, about 2000 miles from where they lived & where the rest of us were subsequently born.
The relative who leaked felt terrible; she had assumed we knew. None of us ever told Mom or Dad their secret was out and they’re gone now too. I’ve never been interested in tracking down the baby’s death records or the grave.
Bottom line: There are a lot of things that could have happened to a newborn in 1950s America, and not all of them result in somebody you could find & talk to today.
Thank you for the replies. It is something that I not obsessed with, as it has been 18 years since I saw my birth certificate. It is just in the back of my head.
I have even surmised that Mom had an unwed pregnancy, that Dad didn’t even know about. And the baby was given up for adoption. Both parents were born in the early 20’s, Dad enlisted, and Mom went to college. They married a year and half after the war Dad got out. Frankly, I am not sure if they even knew each other during the war.