Yes, according to the Social Security Administration, my daughter doesn’t exist.  We were told we’d receive her social security number after about six weeks, but it’s now been over nine weeks so Amanda called the SSA.  Apparently they never received anything.

If Amanda can’t get it straightened out with them she gets the pleasure of standing in line with multiple forms of identification and various documentations saying her daughter is her daughter.

Of course, the alternative is that she can live completely off the grid, huh?

Update:

Here’s what Amanda found out after calling numerous people for literally an hour and a half.  As you already know, she first called the Social Security Administration.  After playing around with their voice activated directory system, which wanted Milly’s Social Security Number in order to connect to someone (see the problem there), she finally got through by answering “yes” to some question, except the machine didn’t understand “yes” so it decided to hand her off to a person.  I know Amanda’s got an accent, but it’s not that bad!  Oh, and she had to trick the system by giving it her own SSN.

When the SSA said they hadn’t received anything yet, Amanda called New Hanover Regional Medical Center and got the runaround for a while.  Eventually she got patched through I guess to the person who handles such things, but the phone kept ringing and ringing without ever going to voicemail.

Amanda called back and talked to someone who tried to patch her through to that same number, but Amanda explained that the phone just kept on ringing.  The person she talked to said that the voicemail must be full and to just keep on trying now and then.  Amanda asked if there was some way she could leave a message, but the person said no, she’d have to just keep trying.  Great, right?  Amanda was just supposed to keep calling this person who walks around the hospital hoping against hope that either the answering machine had space on it or the person was in their office.

Eventually Amanda got someone who happened to see the person she needed to talk to down the hall and went to get her.  Somewhere in all of this we found out that United Health Care had already paid $800 for the Social Security fees.  It’s nice to know they covered that, because they don’t cover anesthesiologists at NRHMC or a number of other things.  In fact, they cover so few things that we’re not even sure if we’ll get around to reaching our deductible.  So why is Amanda paying for health insurance if she has to pay out of pocket for so much if we’ll never get around to reaching the deductible?  I mean, if you can go through a full pregnancy and deliver a baby and still not reach a deductible because so much of it is out of network (things you are required to have, like an anesthesiologist), what’s the point?  Thanks for paying for our Social Security fees, but we’re still going to be paying medical bills for two years.  I guess we could get her a plan with a different company, but at least through her work the costs come out before taxes.

Wow, what a side rant.

Anyway, the fee had been paid, and the person Amanda talked to at the hospital said that the SSA in Raleigh has been backlogged lately.  So I apologize for my earlier sarcasm directed at NHRMC (which I have removed).  It would have been nice if someone Amanda talked to earlier on mentioned that.  Would have saved her an afternoon of frustration.