Baby Logistics Abroad

So, I have said this in previous posts, but never before has it been as justifiable. We haven't posted in a while because we've been a little busy. While in previous years, we would have had a fall break trip to post about, or some new shuffle or adjustment to a new role to post about, we have none of that. But we do have some other life adjustments that are taking up a bit of our time, effort, energy, and focus. Baby Harris is doing just fine adjusting to being alive in the world. As of the time I am writing this, he is about 6 weeks old, eating well, sleeping well, and healthy. We have been adjusting to all that being first time parents entails including lack of sleep, developing changing routines, and a variety of other challenges and wonders that we hadn't experienced before. The purpose of this post, however, is to highlight some of the logistics of having a baby abroad, specifically in Saudi Arabia for those of our friends and families who might be interested. Some things work a bit differently here.

While we have never had a child in the states, my understanding has always been that a birth certificate is issued to the parents of the child in the hospital along with a social security number. Since those are government issued documents, and we do not live in the country that issues them, the steps are a little different for us. Instead of a birth certificate, we were issued a birth announcement in Arabic. I can't read Arabic, but my understanding is that the document serves as proof that the baby was born, at which hospital, at what time, and to the parents. So, very similar to a birth certificate in theory, but not exactly.

Our school and the HR office did an amazing job walking us through this process so all credit goes to them. But before the baby is even born, weeks or months before, an appointment needs to be made at the local Saudi government health office to apply for the actual birth certificate. Since Harris came a little earlier than expected, and we had already made the appointment, we had a few weeks of time to kill before we could go to the appointment. When the day finally came, I took the day off of school and the school arranged for me to go with a guy who can only be described as a fixer, or government office liaison. I had to bring both my and Shannon's passports, resident ID cards, his birth announcement, our marriage license, an Arabic translation of our marriage license, and an application filled out in Arabic. My liaison assured me that this process, with an appointment takes about 10 minutes. Well he was wrong this time. When we got in, we took a number, got ushered from one room to the next, and took a number. We had number 149 and they were on 72 when we got there so I knew the 10 minute time limit wasn't going to be an option for us. About an hour into waiting, we were asked to leave the building to stand outside because they were closing for prayer. I wasn't sure if we would lose our place in line or if the ticket system would still be valid, but either way I wasn't going to leave without a birth certificate. We went back in after prayer and kept waiting. And waiting. And. Waiting. It took a total of about three hours. As I looked around the waiting room, I saw lots and lots of new dads. It was pretty much only new dads as this office was a men only place. At one point, my government office guy toyed with the idea of purchasing the right to swap numbers with someone else. We ultimately decided against it, but I appreciated his resourcefulness nonetheless. When the time finally came, they just came out with a long dot matrix printed stack of connected perforated papers (the elusive birth certificates). They started calling out the names of the babies one by one and exasperated new dads took them triumphantly and left. Mohammed, Abdulaziz, Abdullah, Mohammed, Abdullah, Abdulrahman, Mohamed, and finally Harris. There was no mistaking which one was mine, so that made it easy.

Our next step was to get his passport started. We went and found a local photography studio to take passport photos for him. The regulations and guidelines for baby passports say that since they can't hold their own heads up when they are freshly born, they can have their photos taken from above with them lying down. Well our photo guy did not have that option. Furthermore, they need to have their eyes open, which is also not easy for a newborn. But when we got there, he just happened to wake up serendipitously. So I propped him up on my knee, held his head up, and tried my best to keep my hand out of the frame. What resulted is a photo that Shannon and I can only describe as hilarious. The presence of my hand on his back, holding his neck up, gives him the appearance of a linebacker with huge shoulders and no neck. He is going to have a passport with that photo until he's five years old. Ha! But we were happy to have had it done. So with all of my documents in hand, and my freshly minted birth certificate (all Arabic by the way for those curious, except for my name, Shannon's name, and Harris' name) I went back to school. I handed it all over to our HR person who took all of that to get formally notarized and translated into English. A few weeks later, when I was finally able to get an appointment at the US Embassy, I took all of these documents, newly translated documents, and more applications, and my wife and baby and went over to the Embassy. Yes you heard it right, Harris has already been on sovereign US soil. We applied for a document called a certificate of birth abroad, and a passport for him to solidify his American citizenship and end his lifelong (albeit short life) struggle as a stateless individual. So now we await word on his passport and his official citizenship, which should take about 2-4 weeks.

After that, we start the social security process and all that it might entail. It has been a few errands and a lot of running around, but they are necessary chores for what will be an important step for Harris and our family.