When you have a baby in Mexico, the hospital provides a hospital birth form, known as the hospital long form, or Mexican Secretary of Health Certificate, or Constancia de Nacimiento, or…there’s a few names for it. You need this form to get the official Mexican birth certificate, which is called the Acta de Nacimiento.

You need the Mexican birth certificate in hand before you can apply for a Consular Report of Birth Abroad (CRBA) and the US passport, and you need the US passport in hand before you can return to the USA. So, it’s kind of important. Very important. Mission critical.

In order to get the Mexican birth certificate in Puerto Vallarta, there are (probably) 5 things you need.
1. The hospital long form
2. The parent’s marriage certificate, dated within the last year OR the parent’s birth certificates if they are unmarried
3. If the parent’s documents are not from Mexico, they need to be translated and apostilled by an authorized translator
4. Photo ID for both parents
5. Two witnesses, and their IDs

Plus, absolutely do not forget, you need copies of everything.

I was going to link to the web page that lists the Puerto Vallarta Registro Civil requirements, but literally as I was putting together this post it disappeared. I’ll keep watching for it to return, in the meantime here’s the archive.org link: Acta de Nacimiento menores de 180 días de nacidos.

So, please join on us our journey of trying to wrangle life with a newborn, in a foreign country, navigating the insane foreign bureaucracy, whilst relying on the extreme kindness and patience of our new friends slash witnesses.

Day 0

Let’s call the day I had a baby Day 0. This also happened to be the day that kicked off Semana Santa. If you want my personal advice, it would be to absolutely avoid having a baby during Semana Santa. Don’t do it. Especially not in Puerto Vallarta.

Day 1

When we left the hospital, we knew our long form was incomplete. They left a section blank, because they weren’t sure whether they needed to fill it out with our Mexican address or US address. So right from the start, we knew we’d need to go to Registro Civil, ask them what to do, then return to the hospital to finish filling out the form.

Also, other foreigners who went through this process noted that the form was supposed to be filled out with the mother’s maiden name. Ours listed my married name. We had a hundred problems with my name, but that wasn’t one.

Day 3

We are nothing if not aggressively proactive! Look at us go! Since we knew there was no chance of getting the birth certificate today, we did not bother to take witnesses with us. However, we were very grateful to have Kyle’s mother along to wrangle our toddler while we had our first encounter at the municipal building.

We’re also super smart about bureaucracy and we know better than to show up in the afternoon. However, we did not arrive early enough to beat the crowd.

After waiting in a long line at Registro Civil, we found out that the normal person who takes care of Actas was out on spring break. Okay, no problem. They did have someone who could check our paperwork, and he said that our marriage license (which we received when we got married) was no good – we needed one dated 2023. There’s no way for us to get an updated document, and there’s absolutely no difference between the two documents besides the date from the county clerk.

I also made the mistake of handing him all the paperwork we’d brought along, and he said we needed a copy of Kyle’s birth certificate dated within the last ten years (I swear he was just making up numbers). We didn’t need Kyle’s birth certificate at all and I should never have given it to them. We didn’t figure that out until later though.

Newly dated documents is a thing in Mexican culture. In the US, an official document is an official document. In Mexico, you need a fresh copy for everything. For instance, in order to enroll a kid in school, you would first need to go to Registro Civil and get a new official copy of their birth certificate.

Day 5

I took my days-old baby back to the hospital so we could get our hospital long form filled out with our Mexican address. It took a while of sitting in the waiting room and not really knowing what was going on, but eventually they did come back with my form completely filled out. Yay!

Somewhere around here we misconstrued something that the Dra said. We understood that she was going to give us all the documents we needed to get our paperwork completed. We had to wait until my postpartum appointment with her before we could try again for the Acta. This must have been a language-barrier, sleep-deprived, newborn-haze communication problem. We did not need any paperwork from her. But because we thought we did, we didn’t try going to Registro Civil again until the following week.

Day 12

Having learned our lesson by waiting in a huge line last time, we showed up as soon as Registro Civil opened, this time with our witnesses in tow. Since they also had two tiny children, we were now 4 adults and 4 kids aged 2 and under. Yeah, it was a circus.

Fortunately, our friends speak better Spanish than we do, and helped translate. Long story short, we definitely need a marriage license dated within the last year, that is non-optional. We also need an translated, apostilled copy. They also need a photo ID of me with my maiden name(???).

We have absolutely no way of getting the new marriage license. Even if we could have it sent to a Mexican address, we can’t receive mail at our apartment, and the mail system here is notoriously unreliable. Not to mention, a photo ID with my maiden name? Yeah, that’s not something I travel with. I don’t think I even own an ID like that.

The only one who can override these requirements is the boss, and she’s on vacation for two more days. She’ll call me when she gets back. (But what, she’ll call me and I can’t speak Spanish, so what will that accomplish? Phone calls have been the worst for communication, face-to-face we can always make it work but I don’t speak quite enough Spanish for phone calls).

We were pretty devastated at this point. We can’t get any other paperwork until we have the Mexican birth certificate, and right now we have no way of getting this Acta de Nacimiento. I texted my Dra to see if she knew of any “fixers” who could help, but she just told me that the birth certificate is the baby’s right and that they had to give it to me. In fact, what she said was “Look, everyone has two weeks off for Spring Break. I’ve never had anyone have trouble with the Acta before.” All I can say is: don’t have a baby during Semana Santa.

We apologized to our friends slash witnesses, and headed home. I looked through our travel documents, and believe it or not, I did find an old drivers license with my maiden name stashed deep in the folder.

Day 14

It goes without saying that I never received a phone call.

However, our friends slash witnesses told us their mother was coming down for a visit. And that she would be willing to receive our mail and transport it across the border.

Kyle got in touch with the county clerk where we got married and had two copies of our marriage license shipped priority to our friend’s mother. They should arrive in three days, then she’ll fly down a couple days after that, and then we can use a local translator to get the translated/apostilled copy, and then we should be good to go?

We have only two months left in our apartment, and in that time we need to get the Acta and then get the CRBA and US passport before we can fly back to the USA. We are seriously stressed about getting the Mexican birth certificate.

Day 19

Our marriage license was supposed to arrive yesterday and it didn’t. I’m freaking out because what if it doesn’t get to the mom’s house before she has to fly down here? What’s our next option?

Day 20

Marriage license arrived late, but just in time! Of course, the envelope looks like it’s spent three days at sea (and smells like a chemical spill). Now I’m panicking that it won’t be a nice enough copy to be accepted by Registro Civil, but what other choice do we have?

I tried to coordinate with our translator, but it seems she’s out of town tomorrow. We want to be at Registro Civil at 8am the day after tomorrow, but it looks like we won’t be able to get the Spanish copy of our marriage license. This means we will still be there that morning, but we can’t arrive right as they open.

Day 22

The translator, who is the nicest person on this entire earth, offered to have our marriage license ready by 9:30am. And then she offered to drop it off at our apartment at 9am. And then this morning, we didn’t hear anything from her. While we were freaking out, peak stress levels, and don’t forget still very sleep deprived, she texted around 9am to say that she had run out of ink and was at Office Depot printing off pages. I asked her if she could print copies too, because it would take us extra time to make copies. We didn’t want to waste our friend’s time, and we were already running late. In fact, I think most of our stress was because of wasting time for our friends slash witnesses.

At this point, we are deeply, deeply indebted to our friends slash witnesses, who we only just met a month ago. They have already gone to Registro Civil with us once, they offered their mom’s mailbox for our stuff, and now they are taking off work yet again to meet us at Registro Civil. Hopefully today we get it done because I don’t think I can ask them a third time.

We all arrive at Registro Civil by 10am. We walk up to the window and tell them we are here for the Acta de Nacimiento for our recien nacido.

“Do you have an appointment?” What?! No.
“You need an appointment.” We’ve been here twice and no one asked us for an appointment.
“We were on vacation then.” Wtf. Wtf. Wtf. Wtf. Wtf.
Can you at least check our paperwork?

At this point, Kyle is almost aggressively pleading with them. This is our third time here, we need to get this done. For some reason, they actually take pity on us and take our paperwork.

Now we have a new problem. The name on my passport doesn’t have my middle name. It needs to have my middle name. I can’t just change my passport, so what are our options?

“You can go upstairs to [some office] and get an ID or a verified ID [or something something we didn’t quite understand].” Right, because the solution to bureaucracy is EVEN MORE BUREAUCRACY. Can we try something else? Like maybe my driver’s license, which has my full name?

“No, do you have any other ID?” OF COURSE NOT.

“Well you could go to [neighboring state] and try at the Registro Civil there, they have a completely difference process.” THAT IS NOT A GOOD OPTION. This is a nightmare. This is an actual nightmare. Someone pinch me please.

She finally goes back to get her boss to ask about the driver’s license. The boss comes out. At this point our friend slash witness is translating everything because it turns out that my Spanish knowledge is inverse to my stress levels (ie I am no longer capable of even speaking basic Spanish, I am only a ball of stress). My understanding is that somehow they’re accepting my drivers license and starting to process paperwork.

They give me a long form to fill out, it contains all information for the baby’s parents, grandparents, and witnesses. My brain was like scrambled eggs trying to figure out how to make my hands work to fill out the form. Sleep deprivation and stress are a terrible combination.

I give the document back. The lady looks it over and makes check marks by the things I got right, and when I got something wrong she’d just write in the correct thing (Like I wrote “Tim” instead of “Timothy.”) Finally, it’s a form that doesn’t have to be completely perfect the first time.

We’ve now been here for almost two hours. They have all our paperwork. I think they’re putting it into their system? Our friends slash witnesses are, with good reason, wondering if they can go now or do they have to stay? Their kiddo needs to go down for a nap soon. They had to stay, though. They need to sign the Acta de Nacimiento.

Our toddlers have stayed out of the seahorse fountain so far, but we know we’re pushing our luck.

By now, it’s been hours since my newborn ate. Fortunately there is an amazing nursing room at the Registro Civil. I went in and had barely gotten situated when my friend popped in to let me know one of the employees was looking for me. They needed me to verify information on a form.

I verified our information, then she printed out four long-form birth certificates and I signed each one. The baby was understandably upset so I started nursing him right there in the office. Then Arrow had to fingerprint each form with his right hand, so once again mealtime had to get delayed. After that, Kyle and both our witnesses had to sign each copy of the birth certificate. We received one long form birth certificate, and they filed the rest. Then they gave us a short birth certificate form (the Acta de Nacimiento that we’ve been waiting for!), our CURP (sort of like a social security number), and our certified copy of the hospital long form. They kept our marriage certificate.

Our friends slash witnesses were well past their toddler’s lunch / nap time so they had to leave. We were pushing the limits with our own toddler, but lots of snacks tend to buy some wiggle room. We got back in line at Registro Civil to get more certified copies of the Mexican birth certificate.

Then the power went out.

It was only out for a couple minutes, but then we had to wait for all the computers to boot up again. We finally got 4 more copies of the Acta. We should have gotten a second certified copy of the hospital long form, but we didn’t know the Mexican passport office would keep one.

I walked out of Registro Civil feeling like a million bucks, with Mexico’s newest citizen taking a snooze in celebration. We can see colors again. Did the sun always sparkle so brightly?

We are now able to apply for our CRBA and US passport.

The relief we feel is indescribable. We got the Mexican birth certificate, and it only took three weeks.

Total cost: $133.25
2 recently dated copies of our marriage license + expedited shipping: $35.65
Officially translated and apostilled copy of marriage license: $46.78
4x copies of the birth certificate: $14.46
6 uber/taxi rides: $36.36

I think we were supposed to pay a processing fee for the Acta de Nacimiento but we never got charged for that? The website says the cost should be 309 pesos (about $18). We only had to pay for the copies that we obtained afterwards.

I didn’t include the cost of taking our friends slash witnesses out to dinner twice (one for each trip they made to Registro Civil with us!). We are so, so grateful for their patience and their companionship.

Next up: CRBA and US Passport