Julie, You asked: "Did the sponsors of RC babies attend the baptism? It must have been difficult having everybody present so quickly after the birth." --- My Kingstown Kelly-White-Plunkett RC church baptismal-registry extracts all name each parent and a male and a female sponsor. None explicitly states that any of these people were actually present at the baptism. My Dublin-city Gardiner Curtis-Catherine Hawkins baptismal records have one RC child and the rest COI. All my info comes from churchrecords.irishgenealogy.ie . Curtis RC record: Both the database transcription and the image of the church-register page list the parents and the sponsors, but again do not state explicitly that any of them were present at the baptism. Here's the database page for this child, John Curtis: http://churchrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/details/b3bf5f0166156 . The link to the image is near the bottom of the page. Curtis COI records: Neither the transcription nor the image lists any sponsors, and neither states explicitly that the parents were present at the baptism. Here's the database page for one of these children, Thomas Curtis: http://churchrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/details/53d5c10142056 . I have GRO birth records for six children born in Kingstown between 1865 and 1888. As far as I know, all were at least nominally RC. Only one was born in a hospital (Lying In), John Carey b 1865. The GRO records don't give baptism information or sponsors' names. They do give the name of the person who registered the birth. In John Carey's case it was a person whose name I don't recognize and who looks to be a hospital staff member. All the other five Kingstown children were born at home. (I have the impression John Carey's family had more money than did my Plunketts and Kellys.) For these five children, the informants were an unknown person, an aunt, and in three cases the mother (one 24 days after the birth, the second 49 days, and the third 99 days). I wonder why the mothers did this, and not a family member or friend. I don't have any information on the effect of hospital deliveries on baptism practices. Maybe someone else does. PJ