Filipina giving birth in Singapore...not a walk in the park...

August 25,2016

It was on January 16, 2014, I and my husband became first time parents of our daughter, Audrey Maeve.

Life changes when you have a child. There is no other feeling that can compare to it.

Plus you become more responsible much more than you ever thought you could be. It was a big responsibility upon your shoulder.

In our case, aside from the fact that we don't have our families as a helping hand in our new adventure, we also are added a lot of paper works aside from just registering the birth of our child.

Being a foreigner delivering a baby is Singapore is not a walk in the park.

There are things that you have to accomplish in a specific time frame given by the government so that your baby can stay legally in this country. Not to mention the high costs of medical bills.

Here I would like to share our own experience so others can learn or get an idea on how to do it and avoid the hustle of going back and forth, missing the deadline or worse having to send back your baby to your country.

Once your baby is born here, he/she has a 42-day Social Visit Pass to stay in Singapore. On that given time frame, you have to accomplish the following:

·         1)  Birth Registration

·         2) Passport Application

·         3) PR/Dependent pass application

Since I just gave birth to our daughter, my husband was the one taking care of the “to do list”.

Birth Registration - As per Singapore Law, you have 14 days to register the baby's birth to ICA (Immigration & Checkpoints Authority of Singapore) After our daughter’s birth, my husband immediately file for her birth registration at the hospital. Yes that is right, you can do the registration at the selected hospitals or you can go down to ICA for the registration.

Hospitals where you can register your child's birth include the following:

• Gleneagles Hospital
• KK Women's & Children's Hospital
• Mount Alvernia Hospital
• Mount Elizabeth Hospital
• Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital
• National University Hospital
• Raffles Hospital
• Parkway East Hospital
• Singapore General Hospital
• Thomson Medical Centre

** Data based on listing from www.ica.gov.sg as of date of writing (25/08/16)

Documents you need to do the registration:

• Notification of Live-Birth – this is the form that the nurse will give you immediately after the birth
• Identity card (FIN, E-Pass, S-Pass, etc) of both parents;
• Original Copy of the Marriage Certificate
• Registration of Birth Form
• Administrative fee of SGD 40 for hospital registration (NUH) and SGD 18  at ICA

Do consider the travel time you need to spend if it is worth the dollar. In our case we paid the SGD 40 for the hospital registration fee and two days later my husband went to ICA to amend the incorrect passport number printed in the birth certificate. (Luckily the amendment was free of charge). So better to check thoroughly the birth certificate before the staff laminate it.

As mentioned earlier, another option is to go directly to ICA. Below is their address and opening hours in case you opt to do this.

Registry of Births & Deaths
Citizen Services Centre
3rd Storey, ICA Building
10 Kallang Road
(Next to Lavender MRT station)
Singapore 208718

Operating Hours:
Monday to Friday : 8.00 a.m. to 4.30 p.m.
Saturday : 8.00 a.m. to 12.30 noon

Philippine Passport - My husband scheduled an appointment before coming to the Embassy by sending an email message to epassport.sgpe@gmail.com with a subject : “First-time Application” and in the message, stating the name of our daughter and her birth date.  The Embassy replied to our email confirming the appointment date.

On the day of the appointment, we head down to the Philippine Embassy with our baby daughter as she is require for her photo to be taken for the passport.

Basic Requirements:
1) Duly accomplished passport application form. (You can download at Philippine Embassy website)
2) Cash payment of S$144.50 (passport S$102.00 and notarization S$42.50)
3) Original and five (5) photocopies of the following documents:

• Birth Certificate issued by the Singapore Registration of Births
• Report of Birth. (You can download at Philippine Embassy website). All must have the original signature of the parent
• Data page of passports of parents
• Marriage contract of parents

After the paperwork and the passport photo of our daughter, we received the claim stub for the passport and a Certification from Philippine Embassy regarding the Passport processing which is one of the requirement for an extension of the baby’s pass at the ICA.

Despite our careful management of time to get all the things done, we still didn't make it on time to finish all the requirements before the 42-Day Limit. It took a more than a month before we our daughter's passport has been processed which means there's only 12 days to go to have her DP(Dependent Pass) processed....which is not enough! So we asked for an extension of the 42-Day Limit with our claim stub as proof that it is beyond our control to submit the requirements needed for our DP application. We're so blessed to have been granted an extension which gave us the time needed for processing our daughter's pass.

DP application on my next blog post. I/We hope you find this post helpful.

If you have any comments or questions, feel free to leave a comment.

Always remember, live happily and everything will follow!
Jeannine & Jeffrey