How to find out what time you were born

Do birth certificates show the time of birth?

Sometimes. The copy you were given as a child, or the small card you keep in a drawer, often leaves the time out. The fuller record kept by the state, usually called the long-form or certified copy of the original record, is the one most likely to carry it, because the time is something the hospital or the attendant is asked to report when a birth is registered.

Whether the time is on file, and whether it is printed on the copy you can order, depends on the state where you were born and on the year. Older records are more likely to be missing it. We don't list state rules here, because they differ and change. The reliable way to find out is to contact the vital records office of the state where you were born and ask two things: does my record include a time of birth, and which type of copy shows it?

How to ask for the long-form certificate

1. Find the vital records office (it may be called vital statistics or the department of health) for the state where you were born. Use the state's own website.
2. Ask for a certified copy of the full or long-form record, not an abbreviated or wallet-size version, and ask whether the time of birth is shown.
3. Be ready to prove who you are. Offices usually limit who can order a certified copy, and the person on the record normally can. Fees and waiting times vary.
4. If you were adopted, or the record was amended, ask the office how to request the original record. Rules differ by state.

Ask the hospital for your records

The hospital where you were born may still hold the delivery record. Hospitals merge, rename and close, so first find out who runs it today. Then ask its medical records (health information) department how to request records of your birth. Older records are sometimes moved to storage or to another custodian, and how long they are kept varies, so ask even if the birth was a long time ago.

In older records the details of your birth may sit in your mother's chart. She can usually request her own records. Ask for the delivery or labor record, which is the page most likely to give a time. Some hospitals also issued a decorative birth souvenir with the time on it. That isn't an official record, but it is a clue.

Ask your family

Parents, grandparents and older siblings are often the best source, and the only one for many people. A remembered time is valuable but not always precise, and people round. These questions help turn a memory into something you can use:

• Was it light or dark outside? Before or after a meal, a shift change, a television show?
• Who was there, how did they get to the hospital, and who did they phone afterwards?
• Did a nurse tell them the time, or is it the time someone looked at a clock later?
• Do two people remember it differently? Keep both. Your range runs from the earliest to the latest.

Baby books, announcements and religious records

• Baby books often have a line for the time of birth, filled in by a parent in the first days.
• Birth announcements in cards, letters or a local newspaper sometimes give the time. Local libraries and newspaper archives can help you find one.
• Hospital bracelets and bassinet cards, if someone kept them, can carry a time.
• Religious records, such as a baptism or naming record, sometimes note the time of birth. Ask the congregation or its archive.
• Letters and diaries written around the birth. A relative may have a note of when the call came.

Write it down as a range

Whatever you find, write it as a range, such as “between 2 and 4 in the morning”, and note the source. A confident time that is wrong does more harm than an honest wide one, and a range is what the free check below needs.

If you can't find it

Many people never find a record. You still have two steps that work from a range. First, the free range check: give the earliest and latest time that could be right and see every rising sign inside it. Nothing is saved. If the range holds one sign, you have your answer for it. If it holds several, read what you can use without a birth time in the meantime.

Second, the report. It tests a chart every 5 minutes across your range against the dated events of your life, such as moves, marriages, children and career changes, and sends the most likely window with the evidence and a confidence level. It is not a certified birth time and it is not for official documents. See the sample report.

In the UK?

The rules and the records are different in the United Kingdom. See the UK guide: how to find your birth time in the UK.