Trouble with Birth Order

[michelec 0]

I entered the twins in the wrong order. Neither one of them was named. On the death certificates, they were Baby Boy #1 and Baby Boy #2. I entered #2 first. I already had their sister born 1 year later.

 

Both twins were born premature on the same day and died on the same day they were born.

 

Twin #2 appears before Twin #1, even though I made Twin #1 1st in birth order, Twin #2 2nd in birth order, and sister 3rd in birth order.

 

I also tried changing their birth as Multiple - 2 (Twins) to ? or Single, but that didn't help, either.

 

What can I do to make them appear in the correct order?

 

Thanks!

Michele

[Judy M. 0]

Hi, Michele,

 

I'm far from an expert using TMG, but keep in mind that you can insert anything in the "Sort Date" field so that the births appear in the correct order--even a different day! So you would insert the correct birth date for each twin in the "Date" field. Let's say that's March 31, 1973. Then for Twin #1, you could use March 31, 1973, in the sort field and for Twin #2 you could use April 1, 1973, in the sort field. Those dates won't appear anywhere; they just keep the order of births correct. That's how I would handle it.

[Michael Hannah 0]

I agree with Judy's suggestion. I have always found that using the TMG feature of Sort Dates (available in Advanced data entry mode) has been more useful and reliable for me than using the BIRTHORDER flag. Sort Dates can be used to define an order for an unlimited number of events whose Date fields are all identical. For details of the effect on order of various qualifiers that you can put in the Sort Date, see my earlier post here. With only two tags on the same date, I often just use the date qualifier of a trailing question mark '?' for the Sort Date I wish to sort after the "real" date.

 

Hope this gives you ideas,