Bureaucracy at it’s … finest?

Our Christmas story from two years ago, when we travelled 1900km to give birth in a more comfortable environment had quite a tail. 

It’s bureaucratic chaos at it’s peak, I think. Noa was born in the Netherlands, but we were already registered in Romania. On top of that, we all had COVID and weren’t allowed to exit the house, but we did have to report her birth at the municipality within three days. So our daughter has been reported by my mom, as she was the only one on the same address that was allowed to go outside. Luckily we had a loophole like this, but it did start our journey in the bureaucratic maze.

Next, we needed to get Noa her passport, so she could travel back with us to Romania. Another challenge, as either we would’ve had to wait for 5 or 6 weeks to get a first appointment, or we could go to Schiphol, to get an emergency passport. Little did we know that in order to get such a passport, one would need a Dutch social security number (BSN/CNP), which Noa didn’t have, because we, her parents, already lived in Romania. However, we persisted and showed our flight tickets for the end of December and we got her a temporary travel document. 

We changed this in Bucharest for a real passport, so we could register her with us here in Romania, get her insurance settled and start with vaccinations. Or so we thought. 

The insurance wanted proof of Noa not being insured in the Netherlands (all kids are insured with their parents, and we were already insured in Romania, so why would Noa be insured in the Netherlands?) and we tried and called everyone and everything we could think of who could help us. After a year of calling back and forth, someone at our old insurance company said something about the SVB, and we contacted them. Since Noa still didn’t have a BSN (SSN/CNP), this also gave a lot of extra issues, as you need this number to ask for investigation. 

Turned out she was born an orphan according to their administration. However, the first woman who helped us, did help us to work around this issue. Unfortunately, since we weren’t linked correctly, the investigation got an extra delay of 8 weeks before they proceeded after we sent them the additional information they requested. 

End of October however, we got the note that she was not insured and we could try again.

So we went to Casa de Sanatate, and expected another disappointment. However, this time they quickly found Noa in the system, added the document and she was registered. It felt surreal to be honest, that something we’ve been struggling with for almost two years was suddenly all fixed and done.

So as soon as we came back from the Netherlands we tried to register her with the GP, only to find out Noa was in the system as being 101 years old. We got desperate, thought maybe it was the doctor who wasn’t good with computers. But we called people who we knew might know more about it, and they did! Even better then expected… They had endured the same. So again we went to Casa de Sanatate, asked them to manually adjust this and thought it fixed, but on her birthday Noa still was 102. We called, the guy who fixed it for us while we were at the doctor’s, and he could assure her that she was registered right in their system, so she could start the vaccination program.

Of course that was the exact moment that Noa started to sniffle a bit (after 45 minutes inside!), so again we returned without the result we were hoping for.

But last Monday, everything was finally resolved. The doctor called the company that provided the system, they fixed the error for her and now Noa and Cato both got a 100 years younger (I have to admit they looked insanely good for such old ladies!). And, more importantly, Noa finally started on her vaccine-program. Even more important with an outbreak of the measles in the area.

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