Guatemala City, That's Where I Wanna Be

Pregnancy in Guatemala: Becca’s Take

“Don’t eat chicken or drink too much Chamomile!”

“Don’t ride on the moped when it’s a full moon.  She will come early.  When it’s a full moon, your water will break because the moon controls the waters.  That happened to my daughter.”

Me: “The doctor said it’s a girl.” A friend with no medical experience: “No, I’m telling you, it’s definitely a boy.  You will see, it’s a boy.”

Lady at the baby store- “Oh, we don’t sell crib mattresses here… hmmm… oh, the internet store, called Click, yah the one by the gas station… you go in and they sell baby mattresses.” Only after arriving to find the store closed did it dawn on me that crib mattresses should not be sold at Internet stores. I start to think we have been living here too long.

These are the types of things I have heard for the past eight months. Many things have been interesting, entertaining, and at the very least, mind boggling while being pregnant in Guatemala.  But what is not entertaining about pregnancy in Guatemala is that 80% of births in private hospitals are C-sections.  Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m not into unnecessary C-sections.  Many of my Guatemalan mom friends have told me their birthing stories and most seem terrifying.  Each woman tells me their story with such innocence, thinking that their story is an isolated experience, but what I hear is a web of stories that are the result of widespread dehumanized, greedy, and uninformed medical care.  Because of this, we have had to take a little break from Huehue to seek the best options for our little one on the way.

Thankfully, there is hope. Her name is Hannah Freiwald.  She is known to missionaries and expats as the midwife because, well, almost everybody who doesn’t want to risk an unnecessary C-Section uses her services.  She is a trained German midwife who operates her own natural birthing clinic in Guatemala City, Centro Integral de Parto Natural Ixchel.  She also has another clinic outside of Antigua that predominantly serves low-income indigenous patients, Manos Abiertas.  After hearing great reviews and meeting her in person, Brook and I knew we needed to have our baby at her clinic.  I feel confident in having a drug free water birth; one that I know will not result in surgery unless absolutely necessary. 

We recently left Huehue and arrived at a studio apartment near the clinic.  We will be here for a month before the baby is due and a month after, just in case she comes early or late.  Having a month after the due date will also help us have time to get all of our paperwork together (birth certificate, social security cards, passports, and the first steps of permanent residency). Our little one will have dual citizenship, meaning that we will be parents to a Guatemalan.  Because of this, we will be able to get permanent residency faster than going through the normal process.  Our plan has been to get residency for a while because it will open up opportunities that we previously did not have.  For example, if you are a permanent resident in Guatemala, you can legally adopt here; other foreigners cannot.  We give this privilege over to the Lord and will see how He uses our lives here.

But before we can think about future plans, we are focused on preparing for the little one who will be here within weeks.  We are excited, unafraid, and eager to return home to Huehue with the town’s one and only gringa baby.  She already is the most loved human and we haven’t even met her yet. 

Pregnancy in Guatemala: Brooklin’s Take

I’ve never been pregnant, and hopefully never will be. While the excuse to eat lots of ice cream is nice, the whole thing about growing a little human inside of you is a kind of freaky I doubt I could handle. I’ll leave that to Becca. I can’t say I know what it is like to be pregnant, but I can say pregnancy causes you to reconsider pretty much everything. Your life goals, your plan for the future, how you think you’ll parent, your priorities – it pretty much all goes up in smoke, and then resettles in new patterns. Some things stay the same, some things shift, and some things you leave so far behind you can’t even see them in the rearview mirror. This is how it happened with me, at least. It will probably shift all over again once our little one is actually born. There’s one thing I know won’t change, no matter what: becoming parents has shown me a kind of love I didn’t know existed. Cliché or not, that’s the truth. Other than that unintentionally trite bit of insight, this isn’t so much my take on pregnancy in Guatemala and more my take on life in Guatemala the past two months.

I won’t lie – the last eight weeks have been emotional.  Death and new life, marriage and automobile accidents, new lines of work and old attachments, adoption and abandonment, hellos and goodbyes, promises kept and promises broken – these have all made an appearance in the most recent chapter of our lives. Not all of this has affected us directly, but even indirect contact with the highs and lows experienced by our community have had a toll. But these experiences have left me with another conviction: there is no place I would rather be (cue Clean Bandit/Will Reagan music, depending on your preference). When a girl close to our heart is adopted, I feel a strange combination of joy and missing. There’s no word for it. I have never in my life experienced what it feels like to miss someone, knowing that you most likely will never see them again. Combine that with the secure knowledge that they are now with a loving family, and it becomes indescribable. I could say the same for a dozen different things that have happened the past two months. Joy, frustration, anger, peace, hope, and anticipation have all risen to the surface, either simultaneously or one after the other. Through all of this, I am thankful for the knowledge that we are in the right place, and that we are doing the right thing. I just pray that we continue in our ability to do it.

We arrived in Guatemala City, the big bustling capital of the country, two days ago. Right now, I am very grateful for some time as a family. That family is just the two of us, for now, but very soon it will be three. And I know without a doubt that we will need time together before jumping back into the fray. Please continue to pray with us as we welcome our daughter into the world and figure out how to continue the work that we are called to here. My hope is to push a kind of spiritual and emotional reset button with our time here in the city. I know that’s not how it works – but I can hope, can I not?

Pregnancy photos taken in the hills above Huehue! Photo Cred: Sophia Acosta