Giving birth in Mexico

This post is not an hour-by-hour birth story with all the gory details (I figure most of you just breathed a sigh of relief). If you ask my mom what it was like to birth two kids sans drugs she’ll say, “Oh I don’t remember it being so bad.” Hmm. Apparently there is some really healthy forgetting that happens afterwards, because as Leela was entering the world I remember thinking, “Women have done THIS for all of human history??!”  If she’s ever to have a sibling it’s probably best I not immortalize all the memories in writing. I’ll leave those out while still reviewing what it was like to do this in another country.

In summary, we did not regret choosing to do this in Mexico. It was an overall positive experience and we felt comfortable, listened to, and well taken care of. However it did require some flexibility on our part, particularly with regard to delivery and post-delivery protocols.

Birth Plan
My good friend is an anesthesiologist in San Francisco and has been present at a lot of births, so I asked for her thoughts about prepping for this one. She said ridiculous birth plans are becoming commonplace at her hospital…like 15-page novellas complete with long lists of words no one within earshot of the mother is allowed to utter. “And in the end, hardly any birth follows such a rigid play-by-play, nor can people predict how they’ll feel during labor. My advice? Know what’s important to you, but stay flexible.”

I’m not too keen on making detailed plans ahead of time anyway. For anything. So talking through what was important to us felt like a much worthier use of time, and out of that conversation came this very simple plan:
– pick a hospital where they’d let me move around during labor
– try labor without an epidural
– avoid an unnecessary c-section (more on that in an earlier post)

Due Date
At just over 30 weeks pregnant I flew home to see Samson and family. I was uninsured in the states, so if the baby came early it was going to bankrupt us, and every day I’d repeat don’tgointolabordon’tgointolabor. Fast forward two months and it had changed to pleasegointolaborpleasegointolabor.  My doctor told me he would induce at 41 weeks (one week earlier than most U.S. doctors) and I’d read that induction more often leads to c-sections.

At 39 weeks I tried hiking to the top of this butte in Atlixco in hopes it would spur labor…it did not. It did, however, yield some beautiful shots of Mt. Popo at sunset.
At 41 weeks my doctor refused to wait longer on the induction, but I did some self-advocating around starting the induction as slowly as possible, and at home. By the time we met him at the hospital some mild contractions had started, so we didn’t end up using petocin. We just checked into the labor room and waited.

Labor
We had an entire room to ourselves, including my own bathroom and shower. We checked in at 11am, and throughout the afternoon and evening it was pretty much just the two of us with occasional check-ins from the doctor and nurses. My doctor stayed in the hospital the entire time, which we really appreciated.

I tried negotiating my way out of the IV since walking around with the stand was awkward, but it was pretty much mandatory. Oh well. Stay flexible Katie.

At some point in the afternoon my water broke which started the clock ticking. If more than 12ish hours passed without delivering, my doctor was moving to a c-section. From what friends have told me this is similar to policies in the U.S., the exception being some midwifery practices.

I turned down the epidural because I heard it typically slows labor. But then my labor turned to back labor, and it was….rough. I endured the worst of it for 6 hours with hardly any progression. “At this rate, you only have 18 more hours of labor left,” R. cheerfully joked. I think my response was something like, “Come here. I want to punch you in the face.”

If it was all heading to a midnight c-section anyway I figured the pain was pointless, so we called for the epidural. The ironic thing was that after the epidural, everything sped way up. Maybe because my muscles weren’t so clenched? Regardless, I’m so glad we stayed open to different ideas. Just after midnight my doctor said we were getting close to delivery.

Delivery
There was hardly anyone in our labor room all day, but for some reason there were something like 11 people in the delivery room. To this day I have no idea who half of them were or why they were there. That might be more about our hospital – it’s affiliated with a university and I think there were a lot of doctors-in-training around.

Probably the saddest I got during this whole process was when I saw that they were going to make me go all old-school for the delivery. Like flat on my back, legs restrained. Ugh. But getting worked up over it wouldn’t have changed anything, so I just rolled with it. My sense is that this kind of set-up is more common in Mexico, even in the modern private hospitals.
Post-Delivery
They let us hold Leela for a few minutes. After that she was taken to the nursery, where she was put in an incubator (even though her Apgar score was a 9…I think it’s just more about the Mexicans’ obsession with warmth) and given a bottle. None of this was our preference but it was already 3am and they promised to bring her into our room in the morning.

I was put in a “recovery room” for an hour, which was really just a dark corner of the hospital where I was hooked to an annoying beeping machine. It seemed weird but eh…it was only an hour. R. was not allowed to sit with me, but he was allowed to go with Leela to the nursery while they measured and weighed her.

If I remember correctly, the only vaccination that was non-negotiable at birth was Hepatitis B. For the others we just went with the CDC’s recommendations.

The next morning they wheeled Leela in and we had some nice family time. Around noon our doctor called and said he felt I was ready to go home if I wanted, so that’s what we prepared to do.
Claiming they needed to do a couple more measurements, the nurses took Leela back to the nursery. We found out that this is more about putting the baby in lockdown until you pay your bill. Verrrry clever! R traipsed all over the hospital paying portions of the bill and gathering receipts and approval stamps (they love multi-step payment processes in Mexico). Only after presenting it all at the nursery door were we handed our baby.

Here we are leaving the hospital less than 12 hours after her birth. I don’t think they would’ve made us leave that soon if we didn’t want to – recovering at home just seemed more appealing to me.
Paperwork
Before leaving the hospital we provided information for the Acta de Nacimiento (record of birth). Rebel Heart’s blog contains a detailed post on this process, which turned out to be very helpful, particularly the note about how the mother needs to write her MAIDEN name on the form…not her married name. Even after reading this we messed up the form and had to ask for our doctor’s help in officially amending it.

The Acta de Nacimiento is then taken to Civil Registry, where you apply for a Mexican birth certificate. After going through the process of obtaining visas we were well-versed in the nightmare that is Mexican bureaucracy, so when our doctor suggested we hire a lawyer to handle the process for us, I think our exact response was, “You can DO that?! YES PLEASE.” We gave her our records and then met her at the hospital a week later to receive Leela’s birth certificates (we paid to get extra copies, thinking that would be much easier than trying to request some years later). It cost approximately $50, and honestly, we probably would’ve paid three times that for all the trouble it saved us.

After you have the birth certificate, you set up an appointment with the U.S. Consulate at the nearest embassy to apply for the Consular’s Report of Birth Abroad (essentially the equivalent of a U.S. birth certificate). Their website contains detailed instructions on all of the paperwork that needs to be assembled. Our appointment there was very straightforward and now we’re just waiting for her CRBA and U.S. Passport to arrive in the mail.

Ear-piercingLast week Leela made an appearance at the English class where I volunteered before she was born (the teenage students wanted to throw her a “baby shower”, which was super adorable and sweet). They were varying degrees of shocked and horrified to learn that we didn’t pierce Leela’s ears. All little girls here get it done, which I suppose explains why the public assumes our baby is a boy. “It’s less painful if you do it when they’re a baby,” is everyone’s reason. Call me crazy, but after seeing the cutest little gold hoops on a baby last week I’m half-tempted. In the meantime we just get to hear a lot of “hermoso” and “precioso”.

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Other posts in the “Moving to Mexico” series:
At home in Cholula
Transporting a pet to another country
What to pack for a year abroad
Animals in the murals and on the sidewalks
Preparing to have a baby abroad