Are you my mother?

It's official - I'm a mother!

Yesterday Max’s birth certificate arrived in the mail and I was so glad. I was very keen to get it into the registry as soon as possible. I really felt the need to make Max’s birth ‘official’ for some reason. I wanted to see his name on paper. I wanted the world (or at least the state of Victoria) to know that he existed. Now they will. He is, as they say, ‘on the books’. I feel so proud that future generations might one day stumble across this evidence of his birth and wonder about the story of this little boy’s family. Maybe my descendants, assuming I eventually have some, will use this certificate to help them create their own family trees.

This picture is of the regular certificate they send you that you can use for identification purposes and stuff, not that Max will ever be needing a passport or drivers licence. I also ordered a commemorative one that I am going to frame. That is still coming. I was a bit disappointed with the designs available in Victoria - I thought they were all a bit naff to be honest.

These are the Victorian ones.

In South Australia you can have a panda, bunny or duck one!

Seriously uncool, Victoria.

I guess most people don’t really care about this kind of thing and will wonder why I spent an afternoon researching the designs of a silly form. A birth certificate is just another piece of paper to them - something to file away until baby is older and needs it to prove who he/she is. But when that piece of paper is one of the only things you have to prove that your baby existed - that he was a person who lived - it takes on a whole new significance. This certificate will hang on our wall as a proud reminder that our son was a real part of our lives; that he is not just a part of our imagination or memory.

I also cannot tell you how wonderful it felt to see my name listed as this little boy’s mother, and Leslie’s as his father. It made me feel for the first time that we are really someone’s parents. I want to cut that bit out, highlight it, laminate and keep it in my pocket so that I can pull it out and look at it hundreds of times a day if I want. I’m Max’s mother. He is my son. Those phrases are like chicken soup for my sickly soul. I will never get sick of reading them or hearing them said to me!

There is one more thing I want to say about the birth certificate’s design. I do not think it is necessary anymore to have a space to list details of the parents marriage. In our case, it just means that a whole section is left blank and looks as though we have missed a huge ‘step’ in the process. It makes me want to get out my pen and write something in there that says to the world how much Max’s parents love each other, even though they have not professed it to an imaginary being in a church or in front of kith and kin in a stupid reception centre. Again, maybe I read too much into this stuff, but it irks me!

Finally, at Christmas this year, Max had a little present under the tree from his Nanna. I was so touched when I opened it and found the most gorgeous porcelain keeper for his birth certificate. I had never seen anything like this before, but mum said she found it at a newsagents. You will see how pretty it is in the photos above. The official copy will sit safely in Max’s keepsake box. Thank you, mum, for being so thoughtful!