Mein Sternenkind

“When you past away, your body converted into a thousand stars
and every time I look at the sky, I fall in love with the night.”

Star children are not subject to funeral duties or registration if they

• weigh less than 500g at birth, were born without vital signs and have not reached the 23 + 0 week of gestation.

Exception

• In rare cases, a child may be born that does not reach 500 grams or the 22nd week of gestation, but still breathes for a short time after birth and has cardiac activity. In this situation, the child is subject to registration as it is classed as a live birth. These children also have a right to be registered in the family book.

Not subject to funeral duties means

• that the child does not have to be buried or cremated, but it can be.

Not subject to registration means

• that the child will not be registered
• no death certificate will be issued
• no notice is given to the commune
• the child may be given a name as a separate little personality
• since 1 January 2019, there is the possibility of registration at the registrar’s office. To that end, here is an excerpt from the Civil

Status Ordinance:
The birth of a miscarried child can in future be recorded in the civil register. Every registrar’s office in Switzerland is responsible (Art. 9c (3) EZStV) for cases related to Switzerland. For technical documentation reasons, the event location corresponds to the registered office of the civil registry office. The certification is issued exclusively at the request of one or both parents. It does not initiate the notification to other authorities, nor is the other parent informed if they did not submit the request. This serves exclusively as proof of the event. The application for a miscarriage certificate must be accompanied by a certificate issued by a doctor, a midwife or an obstetrician. There are no minimum age or weight requirements (Postulates Report, no. 11.1); therefore, a certificate can be issued from the beginning of the pregnancy. How the end of the pregnancy occurred is also irrelevant.
For more information: www.ejpd.admin.ch

Various options are available

• Many hospitals offer group cremations. The little star children are collected, retained and cremated together (this usually takes place twice a year). The ashes are interned in the star child grave, in a beautiful farewell ceremony to which all parents are invited. It should be remembered that the period from birth to funeral can sometimes be very long.
• Some cemeteries also offer the possibility to individually intern the child in the star child grave.
• You can take your child home and find your own suitable place to bury it.
• If you would like to bury your child in the nearby cemetery, ask the church if this is possible. Much is possible if you ask for it.
• A cremation is possible, but it remains to be considered that from very small bodies almost no ash remains.

You as a parent determine what happens to your child. It is not up to anyone else to withhold or decide what happens to your child.

Quite often, there is still the misconception that children who are not subject to registration can only be disposed of with the hospital waste. No law dictates that these small bodies have to end up as hospital waste.

The fact is that star children, together with placentas and other human “parts”, must be incinerated as normal in a crematorium (information brochure of the Federal Office for the Environment) and are not allowed to end up in a communal waste incinerator. Therefore, there is only one guideline of what has to happen to the small body when it is “disposed of” by the hospital.