Labor was supposed to be the hard part....

.. but when you have a baby abroad, what happens afterward, can cause you just as much pain...

Because our child will be born in Vietnam, as opposed to the US, where you just get a birth certificate from the hospital, or in the mail, or from a stork, or some other presumably easy process; our process is going to be a bit more difficult. Instead of just a birth certificate we will need the following:



1. Vietnamese Birth Certificate
2. US Consular Report of Birth Abroad
3. US Passport
4. Vietnamese residency Visa

Vietnamese Birth Certificate
To get the Vietnamese Birth Certificate we need:

• Birth notice from the hospital
• A copy of our marriage license (stamped by the US consulate and translated into Vietnamese, if not already, by the Vietnamese Department of Justice and notarized)
• A declaration of nationality selection from the US Consulate stating that our child will be granted US citizenship (stamped by the US consulate and translated into Vietnamese, by the Vietnamese Department of Justice and notarized)
• Photocopies of both of our passports.
• A copy of our police residency records from Viet Nam.

Consular Report of Birth Abroad
To file a Consular Report of Birth Abroad (CRBA) through the US Consulate in HCMC, we need the following documents:

•  A Vietnamese birth certificate issued by the Vietnamese Department of Justice
• Our marriage certificate
• Proof of relationship between parents (pictures, letters, etc.)
• Proof of pregnancy (doctors records, hospital receipts, pregnancy pictures, etc.)
• Proof of parentage if parents are not both US citizens (documents showing both parents in same place at the time of conception – visa stamps, flight receipts, etc.)
• Proof of residency in the US for at least five consecutive years prior to current international post (social security statements, tax forms, etc.)
• Proof of US Citizenship (Passport, birth certificate, social security card, etc.)
• Various Official Forms from the Consular Website

US Passport
For the baby's passport, we need:

• Passport Application Form
• Two Passport Photos of the Baby

Vietnamese Visa
I really have no idea what we need to get the baby a Visa. I should probably ask some other local moms.

Needless to say, we have a bit of a bureaucratic hill to climb. Just something to think about if any of you are planning to come to Viet Nam and have a/another baby....