Estoy Embarazado

Heheheheheh...

This is one of my favorite puns in Spanish-English mistranslation.

Anyway, today while orchestrating one of our now famous whirlwind prenatal clinics in a tiny village around town we had a local comadrona come asking for us to attend a birth at one of the homes down the road. Catherine, the professor and midwife, told us to choose a number between one and ten... Meant to be...

I followed her and the comadrona into a bedroom where a woman lay flat and with contractions her mother-in-law pushed on her fundus. She looked exhausted and strained. We auscultated fetal tones, palpated, sat with her through a few contractions, encouraged fluid and movement. Had her mother-in-law help us to remove the extra belt she was wearing around her abdomen (perhaps to also "help" push on the fundus, but really these seem to just block complete movement of the baby--we've seen lots of transverse and oblique presentations in the clinics). The comadrona asked Catherine to check her cervix. Only 4 or 5 centimeters. Definitely not time to be pushing, sheesh.

We left, Catherine saying, in all her years she has never been asked to a home birth in Guatemala. While it could have been considered an honor, it felt more like the family wanted all these foreign medic people to offer them some other standard of care than they assumed they were already receiving. They asked for an IV, and more gloves, and for us to stay.

We gave them reassurance, a bundle of onesies and receiving blankets and moved on to the next village for our scheduled prenatal clinic set-up. Our cultural broker, the local Health Promoter, told us that although the family may have wanted us to stay, the comadrona would not be paid for the birth if so, and these women put in their time and expertise working with each woman and family, we think she was being polite in front of us and the family. The woman has already had many babies, and she was going to do fine.

Sure enough, we got word by the end of the prenatal clinic at the next village, she gave birth at 4pm (2 hours ago) and everyone is great.

Birth is most exciting and wonderful, when least eventful and interrupted eh?