Obviously, the certification of live birth has no stamp seal or signature or anything apparently. No hospital. No physician name. There is really no name or authority on it that certifies anything. BTW, when you typed them up, would you type up ones from 40 years ago, or just current ones?
To be honest, I have no idea *what* that is. They’re claiming it’s a Certificate of Live Birth, which isn’t the same as an issued birth certificate. They may vary from state to state, but it doesn’t look like the ones we filled out and were filed, in order to get what most people consider the ‘real’ certificate.
Certificate of live birth looks pretty much like a death certificate, if you’ve ever seen one of those. Baby Boy/Girl Last Name, names of parents, mom’s maiden name, race of parents, time and date of birth, who delivered, state, county, etc. The delivering doc or midwife signed. These were done within an hour or so of the baby’s birth, with the info L&D would call down to us. This was then forwarded to Vital Statistics, along with the paperwork the nurses filled out upon baby’s discharge that had the name given by the parents. B of VS would then compile all the info sent to them into the official Birth Certificate- usually parents would be told that they could get the actual BC in a week or two from VS, since it would take a bit to get the info over there. All Certificates of Live Birth were Baby Boy/Girl, we never put the actual given name on them. It may be done differently in some states but I kind of doubt it, since most names aren’t officially registered on any paperwork until the day of discharge.
There are also Certs of Still Birth (sadly) that were filled out the exact same way. The delivering doc would come down later and sign the cause of death on it, since there is no separate Death Cert issued in those cases. Every birth, Live or Still, has its accompanying certificate. There is a signature - the doc or midwife - on the Live Birth/Still Birth certs but no stamp or seal. The doc/midwife signature makes it ‘official’. The stamps or seals are used on the official BCs. We only did it when there was a birth.
(I hope this is understandable...I’m tired!)
I hope this link works - this is very close to what we filled out at the hospital (obviously revised in 2003). I worked there from 1986-2002. What was filed in 1961 may be different, I dunno.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/birth11-03final-ACC.pdf