'We were horrified': parents heartbroken as baby girl registered as male

A newborn baby girl will have to go through life with the wrong s*x on her birth certificate after a registrar's error, which her parents have been told they cannot change.

Grace Bingham and her partner, Ewan Murray, were excited to register their first child at the Sutton-in-Ashfield Registration Office in Nottinghamshire last week. But, after nights of broken sleep, they failed to notice the registrar had written the wrong s*x on the birth certificate until after it had been submitted.

"We were horrified but assumed that, as we saw the mistake just a few seconds after it had happened, correcting it would be an easy matter," said Murray. "But although the registrar apologised for her mistake – and the area manager also apologised – it turns out that birth certificates can't be changed."

Birth certificate for Lilah who was wrongly registered as a boy.

Birth certificate for Lilah who was wrongly registered as a boy. Photograph: Ewan Murray and Grace Bingham.

The General Register Office (GRO), which is responsible for administering all civil registration in England and Wales, and the Home Office have both confirmed that Lilah's birth certificate cannot be reissued, although an amendment can be made in the margin of the original document.

But Bingham said this is not enough. "People reading a birth certificate might easily miss a tiny note in the margin – which means that Lilah could be regarded as male when she applies for school, her passport, for jobs – for everything that she needs a full birth certificate for."

"Even if people do notice the correction, they'll assume our daughter is transgender – which isn't an issue if that's what she wants to be when she's older, but it's not the case now," she added.

"Lilah might also not believe she was born a girl, but that there was a strange, biological thing that went on when she was born," Bingham said. "I just feel so guilty. I'm in tears all the time. I'm completely torn up over it."

The family complained to the GRO but was told the mistake was their responsibility and could not be fully rectified.

"The duty to ensure that information recorded in any particular entry is true is the responsibility of the person providing the information and not of the registrar general or the registrar recording the birth," the GRO said.

"By law, a full certificate must be an exact duplicate of the registration to which it relates.