Days to go
I am days away from having this baby. I can say that with such certainty because my doctor has scheduled me for induction early next week. There is a chance, obviously, that I could still go into labor on my own this week. I am not sure which way I would prefer this to go, but the scheduled induction does allow me to take my time getting to the hospital Monday night rather than have to cross the border already in labor and find my way to the hospital in a hurry. I've never been a big fan of scheduling birth unnecessarily, something a lot of Hong Kong and Chinese people do (I've been asked by some Chinese friends if we had "picked a good date" for delivery), but as my doctor stated on my admission forms, this is indicated because of my "bad obstetrical history." Her exact words in English.
I've been rechecking various websites in the past week so that Randy and I can get all the birth registry and passport and immigration paperwork together. According to a few of my American friends, all of this can be taken care of within days in Hong Kong. Everyone assures me it will be easy. But when I am looking for all the addresses of the places we will need to go, the various offices and consulates, I realize that somehow previously I had missed an important necessary document--an official marriage certificate.
I don't know how I missed this before, but both Hong Kong and the US authorities require our marriage certificate. Randy and I know that we didn't need an original copy for anything so far here in China, either for visas or residency permits or anything. Neither of us could even remember seeing our marriage certificate in the past few years. Our worst fear was that it was in some unmarked box among all the unmarked boxes in our storage unit.
Calls, calls, call, emails, more calls, to see if anyone in Randy's family has seen it. Initially, no luck. Could we get a replacement mailed to us before next week? I have even investigated actually having the baby officially declared illegitimate by both Hong Kong and the U.S. so that we could process the paperwork quickly. Oh, don't be so scandalized. What would you do? It would be far easier and even less expensive to call this child illegitimate if we were still weeks away from having an official marriage certificate in our hands while we were only days away from having this baby. Both Hong Kong and the US consulate have special procedures for processing children with no fathers on the birth certificate, and birth certificates can always be amended. As long as we remember to do so........
However, late last week we found out that someone in the Callihan family actually did have our marriage certificate. Apparently we did need just a copy of it for our original residence visas, and Randy's eldest son had scanned and emailed it to us. So...whew! It is now in transit, somewhere between Alaska and Hong Kong. I expect it by week's end, so we should be set, right?
I've been rechecking various websites in the past week so that Randy and I can get all the birth registry and passport and immigration paperwork together. According to a few of my American friends, all of this can be taken care of within days in Hong Kong. Everyone assures me it will be easy. But when I am looking for all the addresses of the places we will need to go, the various offices and consulates, I realize that somehow previously I had missed an important necessary document--an official marriage certificate.
I don't know how I missed this before, but both Hong Kong and the US authorities require our marriage certificate. Randy and I know that we didn't need an original copy for anything so far here in China, either for visas or residency permits or anything. Neither of us could even remember seeing our marriage certificate in the past few years. Our worst fear was that it was in some unmarked box among all the unmarked boxes in our storage unit.
Calls, calls, call, emails, more calls, to see if anyone in Randy's family has seen it. Initially, no luck. Could we get a replacement mailed to us before next week? I have even investigated actually having the baby officially declared illegitimate by both Hong Kong and the U.S. so that we could process the paperwork quickly. Oh, don't be so scandalized. What would you do? It would be far easier and even less expensive to call this child illegitimate if we were still weeks away from having an official marriage certificate in our hands while we were only days away from having this baby. Both Hong Kong and the US consulate have special procedures for processing children with no fathers on the birth certificate, and birth certificates can always be amended. As long as we remember to do so........
However, late last week we found out that someone in the Callihan family actually did have our marriage certificate. Apparently we did need just a copy of it for our original residence visas, and Randy's eldest son had scanned and emailed it to us. So...whew! It is now in transit, somewhere between Alaska and Hong Kong. I expect it by week's end, so we should be set, right?
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