The Bane and the Beauty of Being Pregnant in Costa Rica

Though life “down here” continually reveals itself in a rainbow array of gray shadings, there does seem to be a particular black-and-white duality to being a pregnant extranjero in a third-world country. Just ask Brangelina, I’m sure they would concur (as we have so much in common – glamorous lives, endless cash, and legs up to here included, of course). Oops -- caught me fantasizing again. Anyway, as I was saying . . .there are particular aspects of wonder-full-ness as well as particular aspects of what-the-f$^%-ness involved in expecting a child and planning a birth outside the country of our native citizenry. Some things are minor, other things are a bit more significant, there are clouds, there are silver linings, there are obstacles, there are wide-open doors. Let me lay out the twofold-ness of it all . . .

· We get to enjoy the tranquil atmosphere of our tropical jungle-mountain paradise, but our road is so bad that I have been instructed not to travel it often if at all (imagine baby’s head bumping rhythmically against my cervix as our truck careens over and around boulders and ditches) and I have therefore become a virtual captive of said paradise. Which, of course, makes it seem not so much like paradise at times.

· With the lack of accessibility to Ben and Jerry’s, See’s Candy, In ‘n’ Out burger and endless Mexican joints, my pregnancy diet has been fairly fresh and healthy – dammit.

· I am ever thankful for our fabulous midwife and her nurturing, awe-inspiring comfort and care, but having to travel 4 to 6 hours by car one-way to see her has not been easy. Thankfully, it’s only been every 4 to 6 weeks. And going to the big city isn’t all that bad – civilization, shopping, restaurants . . .I can handle it.

· Since we’re not residents, we need to be out of the country for the requisite 72 hours after being here for 90 days – of course, my and Wilder’s next scheduled exit is in mid-October, right around the baby’s due date. Convenient? Not! We will either have to hop the border to Nicaragua for a few days at the beginning of September before moving to San Jose, or blow the whole thing off and hope for the best. ;)

· Our intention is for a safe and gentle home water birth at our “villa” in the hills above San Jose, but in the event of an emergency there is no reliable ambulance service to the hospital, which is 25 minutes away. Thankfully, we trust our midwife, her driving, and her judgment implicitly. (Well, I’m not really sure about her driving, but what choice do we have?! ;) The alternative is to wait up to 2 hours for an ambulance that may or may not show up depending upon a host of factors, all of which may or may not be related to traffic and other patients in need.

· Simply by virtue of being born on Tico soil to US citizens, our baby will be afforded dual citizenship, but to secure legal documentation of such we must jump through several circus-like hoops. In addition to supplying prenatal-care records, proof of vaccinations (they vaccinate with a triple cocktail at BIRTH here; thankfully we have a way around this), and a host of other scraps of official-looking paper, to get the Costa Rican birth certificate we also need notarized statements from at least two local friends who can say that they saw me pregnant. You know, just in case I faked it and was walking around with a pillow tucked under my shirt for 9 months so I could steal this gringo-looking newborn from my neighbor. Why not just take blood and urine samples while they’re at it? Actually, such fascist practices may not be that far from what the US consulate requires to prove the same thing. One story goes that the aforementioned institution made one mother visit a doctor for a physical exam to prove that she had indeed given birth before consenting to award citizenship to the newborn in her arms. “US out of my uterus!”

Well, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – careful what you wish for! We wanted an adventure, we wanted a different experience, and we are surely getting it. If we were anticipating this experience to be a cake walk, we forgot where we’ve been living the past year and half! But its all relative. If we were in California, we’d still have concerns and issues, if not the self-same concerns and issues. The most important thing is that I feel great, the baby is healthy (movin’ and a groovin’ all the time in my “panzita”, good position, strong heart tones), and we get to welcome this new little being into the world in just 10 short weeks! That’s the reality. That’s the focus. All the rest is negligible and will come to pass.

Tico Toilet

One thing that promises to make the remainder of my pregnancy life infinitely better is the new piece of furniture that Chris made me this morning – a toilet! You see, we sleep upstairs and the only bathroom we have is downstairs (if you don’t count the outdoor composting toilets), so every night for the past 30 weeks, at least two or three times a night, I have had to make my way down the spiral staircase in the semi-darkness to empty my cramped bladder. That’s anywhere from 420 to 630 times that I have walked down and then back up the staircase while half asleep and in urgent need. But now, thanks to my hunky and handy husband who got up at the crack of dawn this morning in his boxer briefs and Crocs to saw and screw and sand and varnish, I do not need to haul my clumsy heft down those stairs at night anymore. Because now upstairs, at the foot of our bed, I have a lovely, stained wooden bench with a hole in the middle and a comfy, squishy toilet seat screwed on top of it, upon which I can sit and pee into a bucket underneath. It’s the little things, really . . .