New baby documents: the first-90-days checklist
You'll leave the hospital with a person you didn't have before, on no sleep, and the state would like some paperwork. Most of it is forgiving. One item is not, and it's the one this page exists to flag.
The new baby documents checklist is mercifully front-loaded: the hospital starts the two biggest items for you. The birth registration paperwork you complete before discharge becomes the birth certificate, and the same form almost always includes a checkbox to request a Social Security number — tick it, and the card arrives by mail in a few weeks with no separate trip to anything.
The one real deadline
Adding the baby to your health insurance is commonly a 30-day window (some plans and marketplace coverage allow 60 — check yours, don't assume). A birth is a “qualifying life event”, which lets you change coverage outside open enrollment; miss the window and the baby can be uninsured until the next enrollment period, with the newborn's own medical bills — which started at minute zero — landing very differently. Call the insurer or HR from the hospital chair if you like; the call takes minutes and closes the single costliest gap on this page.
The same life-event window covers other elections worth a look while you're in there: dependent-care FSA contributions, life insurance through work, beneficiary updates.
The first month
- Birth certificate copies: when the registration processes, order two or three certified copies from vital records. Daycare enrollment, passports, and some benefits all want one, sometimes simultaneously.
- Social Security card: arrives by mail if you ticked the hospital checkbox; file the number safely and don't carry the card. If it doesn't arrive within about six weeks, follow up with the SSA.
- Pediatrician paperwork: the immunization record starts now and follows this child to every school and camp for eighteen years. It's the most-requested document of childhood; treat it as permanent from day one.
The first 90 days, as energy returns
- Update your will — or write the first one. The point isn't money; it's naming a guardian. Without one in writing, that decision belongs to a court. This is the item most postponed and most important on the whole page.
- Life insurance: if anyone depends on your income, now it's true of someone who'll depend on it for two decades. Term coverage is the boring, correct answer for most families.
- A passport, if travel is plausible: infant passports require both parents and the baby in person, use form DS-11, and last five years. Note the six-month rule applies to a five-year document — a “recent” infant passport ages out faster than intuition says.
- College savings (529) and the paperwork trail: optional, but opening one early is mostly a beneficiary form and a bank link — easiest done before the baby can walk away with your laptop.
A baby is a new member of the household's paperwork, arriving all at once: certificate, SSN, insurance confirmations, immunization records. Snap each into Drawer as it appears and the whole household can find them at 2am — and the dates (that insurance window, the passport's five years) get watched by something that isn't running on newborn sleep. Private beta; waitlist here.
Questions people actually ask
We missed the 30-day insurance window. Is it hopeless?
Call anyway, today. Some plans allow 60 days, marketplace rules differ from employer rules, and insurers resolve borderline cases case-by-case — a documented birth is the most sympathetic life event there is. If it's genuinely closed, ask about state programs (CHIP covers children broadly) rather than waiting bare until open enrollment.
Do we really need certified birth certificate copies, or will photocopies do?
For official uses — passports, some benefits, sometimes school enrollment — certified copies with the seal. Photocopies and scans cover everything informal. Two or three certified copies ordered early costs little and spares you re-ordering during some future deadline.
When can a newborn get a passport?
As soon as the birth certificate exists — there's no minimum age. Both parents and the baby appear in person with form DS-11. If international family or travel is in your life at all, doing it in the calm early months beats doing it against a ticket date.