A young couple have been left furious after their baby girl was “legally born a boy” after the wrong sex was mistakenly put on her birth certificate.
Ewan Murray and Grace Bingham say they have been unable to amend the error on five-week-old Lilah’s records despite getting in touch with national registration bosses. The mistake happened when the new parents went to register Lilah’s birth at Sutton-in-Ashfield Registration Office in Nottinghamshire on Wednesday, November 13.
Grace, 20, said: “It’s a nightmare, it’s destroyed me. I have been non-stop crying, it’s not something you ever expect to happen.”
As reported by Nottinghamshire Live, Ewan, 21, said the only suggested fix was to put a note at the bottom of the certificate saying ‘male changed to female’. The Tesco shift leader said: “I don’t think it’s good enough. It looks like a transgender baby. It sounds like she was born a boy and we’ve decided to make her a female at five weeks old.”
“They ask a lot of questions but never the child’s gender because they’re given to them by the hospital notes on the screen. We didn’t even think to check the gender box which is our responsibility partially. The [registrar] responsible has taken full responsibility for it. We were still in the office when we figured it out.”
The couple, from Kirkby-in-Ashfield, have since tried contacting Nottinghamshire Register Offices and the General Register Office to no avail. Ewan said: “At the moment our five-week-old daughter is, according to the government, a male. We’ve had to register her to the doctors and for child benefits as a boy. She’s been failed by the system already and she’s only five weeks old.
“It was devastating, she was our first child. It’s unacceptable that she’ll have a male birth certificate for the rest of her life. It’s not going to be good when she applies for a passport, gets married or applies for a job.”
Grace added: “I don’t have a son, I have a daughter. I don’t feel we have been treated fairly. I feel it’s been brushed under the carpet. I’m not stopping until she’s got a female on her birth certificate.”
The Home Office has been contacted for comment.
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