Peggy Klappenberger of Crownsville, Maryland, has a little game she plays with her two teenage sons. Every time she drives by the hospital where they were born, she points to the window of the room where their birth took place. She makes a point of telling them, over and over, that they are seeing the building where they came into the world.
It may seem like a harmless quirk, but there’s a reason it’s so important to her: Klappenberger doesn’t know the name of the hospital where she was born. She doesn’t know her original name, either.
When Klappenberger was adopted as an infant, she received a new birth certificate with her new name and the names of her adoptive parents. She’s never seen her original birth certificate, because the state sealed it after her birth mother relinquished her.
She’s intent on getting that certificate — the one that identified her for the first 5 1/2 months of her life. While she has been able to track down some information about her origins, seeing the actual document is important to her; it will show her the name of the hospital, her birth parents’ names and her original name. But Maryland and most other states make it difficult, if not impossible, for adoptees to see their original certificates.