So this event happened a while ago, but since it explains a few things to my friends about “things” and well I’m too lazy to sit and type it in chat windows a bunch of times I thought I would share here. Anyway it’s a quite amusing story or at least we think so ;)

Al was born in November of last year. Everything went well there were NO complications and the delivery was fast and painfull. She had no birth weight problems (8.6) no health problems nothin. We stayed in the hospital for the couple days our insurance would allow just for the nice relaxing break and then brought her home. She’s been a quite happy, snuggley, quiet (but spunky) baby ever since she came home. _Oh yeah and did I mention she was and is very very healthy?_

We of course recieved her SS card a couple of months after she was born and thought nothing too strange of it. A couple months __is__ sort of a long time to wait to get the SS card (specially when you filled out the paper work the day they are born and got the confimation that it had been processed) *but* we figured it was right around the holidays things get crazy and often slow with the mail round then and wrote it off as nothing.

A couple of months go by and now it’s February, Hubby brings in the mail and hands me what was mine. Looked like a bunch of junk mail, but since things rarely come addressed to me I open them all cause well… I wanna feel like someone loves me via the postal service :lol Not only that right after you have a baby you usually get some really nice coupons for diapers and stuff and I would have to kick myself if I just threw those away.

In the mail was a letter from something called PRAMS(Pregnancy Risk Assesment Monitoring System) they basically randomly select mothers who recently had babies and survey them about their pregnancy and birth to help them collect stats and of course use the info to help decide what areas the state can help make things better for mothers by way of assistance. Trying to be community minded I decided to open it up. As I perused the letter to make sure there weren’t any silly rules or catches. A line catches my eye:

bq. If you have lost your baby because of death, we are truly sorry about your loss and offer our sypathy to you and your family.

What an odd thing to put in a blanket letter to all the mothers of the survey. For being so “__truly sorry__” and offering “__our sympathy to you and your family__” they sure did pick a cold and insensative way to handle that. I thought for a moment about how if I were a mother who had lost her child and was recieving this letter not only would it be hard to think about filling out a survey on the whole ordeal that line deffinately would not cushion anything and make the survey any more desireable. Alas though I was not one of those mothers so I didn’t dwell on the line too long and decided to keep an eye out for the “soon to arrive” survey.

The packet with the survey in it arrived a couple weeks later. I can be known procrastinate at times (__quite skillfully I might add__) and I of course set the survey aside to work on it another time when things weren’t so busy round the house. By the time I opened it I had sort of forgot what it was all about. So I again decided to read the letter that came with this new one before I filled out the survey, and my goodness am I glad I did. I was immediately taken back by the entire letter:

bq. Dear Ms. Whaley

I am writing to ask for your help with a research project called PRAMS. PRAMS is sponsored by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the State Health and Human Services System. We want to find out why some babies are born healthy and some are not, and would like you to answer some questions about your recent pregnancy.

Your name was picked by a computer from recent birth certificates. After your name was picked, I learned that your baby had died. I am very sorry for your loss. Although this may be a difficult timefor you, I hope you will agree to help us with PRAMS. Your answers are very important and could help mothers and babies in the future.

The questions we would like you to answer are in the enclosed booklet. …

After you finish answering the questions, please send the booklet back to us. ….

To thank you for your help, I am sending a small gift with this letter.

Sincerely

Enclosed with the letter was not only the survey booklet, but a gift attached to a small card. It was a pin shaped like a bouquet of flowers and a little appology prose for the loss of our baby. I sat staring at the letter for a few minutes trying to make sense of it.

It was disturbing to recieve a letter from a State organization that was telling me my baby is dead :S It was even more disturbing (not to mention hard to dismiss) that I had recieved a “gift” for this. Had the letter come by itself I may have puzzled for a bit and then relaxed before investigating, but the gift was a clencher. Something was NOT right! I know for a fact that my child is not deceased as she was screaming her wee head off as I was reading it, in fact Daddy was holding her trying to get her to calm down. So I KNOW she is very much alive. Even though it was Sunday I immediately called the number provided and left a message explaining what was not right about their letter and begging that they call me back immediately. If this was just a fluke (merely the blanket letter they send to everyone) I was fully ready to give them a piece of my mind, letting them know how inappropriate it was and how much it allarmed us, *BUT* if this wasn’t a fluke I wanted to know what on God’s green earth was going on and I wanted to know now.

I barely contained myself through the rest of the weekend and watched the phone like a hawk for the following week. I knew repeated messages would get me nowhere (this is a state office after all :Q ) so I tried as hard as I could to be patient, and I grew more and more irritated as the days went by. It obviously was all I could think about and needed to get it off my chest so on Monday of the next week I decided to start trying to play the phone game getting tossed from number to number trying to find someone who wasn’t on lunch, vacation, “too busy”, “in a __meeting__”, or wasn’t allowed to share information with me. Everyone I talked to was shocked to hear my story and deffinately wanted to help me, but of course would need to transfer me and have me explain my situation *again* to so-and-so.

By Wednesday I finally got a gentlman who tried his best to calm me down and figure things out. He explained to me that the Vital Records did in fact have my youngest child filed as deceased, but that he did not know why or how to get it fixed. He assured me that they would investigate it and let me know what I may need to do, and possibley what happened if they could figure it out. I was pleased with this answer for the time being and agreed to let him call me back.

Before he ended the call he informed me that while he was investigating what happened I should go and retrieve my _3 month old daughter’s_ credit report and make sure there isn’t anything strange on it. He also informed me that I should inform our insurance company what was going on and make sure they at least had thier records straight and record that they had talked to us about what was going on. I was scared at this point. What if someone had stolen her identity? claimed life insurance on her? 8o OMG what would happen? How would this affect our life in the long run?

He informed me that there has been an increase in the theft of childrens identities lately. That kids are turning 16 going to get their permits and finding out their license has been suspended and that they have warrants out for their arrest or some bizarre stuff like that. He said safe parents should try to protect their childrens identities as close as they possibley can. Including sharing your “Brag Book” online. :(

To my surprise two days later I recieved a letter in the mail from PRAMS expressing how sorry they were for what had happened and letting me know that the problem had been corrected. Her permanent birth certificate with Vital Records now had her as living. They also managed to find out what had happened apparently the information sent from the hospital was incorrectly coded.

__Whew__ :thumbs Thank goodness. Really though I knew she was alive all along, and well I’m just glad nothing more serious happened in the process. We can laugh about it now, but it deffinately spooked us for a bit.