GUATEMALA PART I

Every country is different, and I feel like this journey keeps reminding me how unpredictable life can be.

I started in India with a plan that got completely thrown overboard and ever since then, I’ve been moving and figuring things out as I go.

Now in Guatemala, I thought… maybe this time I have a bit more of a plan again.

I had contacts with several midwives in advance. When I arrived on a Tuesday night in Guatemala City and made my way to Antigua in the dark, not really knowing where I was or what surrounded me, I was super excited.

The next morning, I woke up in this small, beautiful city surrounded by volcanoes.

It felt surreal walking through cobblestone streets, passing local markets with all their noise ans smells, seeing agencies on every corner offering hikes to the nearby volcanoes, like life here exists somewhere between normal and something surreal. (Fun Fact: Guatemala has 2 Aiports and 37 vulcanos)

One of the midwives I had been in contact with agreed to meet me at her birthing center.

And again I felt so greatful for the trust I was given and I learned so much.

In Guatemala, traditional midwives are called comadronas. They are recognized within the healthcare system since the peace accords in 1996, and yet at the same time, they are often under-supported and not integrated into formal medical structures. There is a certain kind of tension and you can feel it.

Guatemala has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in Latin America,especially among Indigenous women in rural areas. And access to respectful, culturally safe care is still not a given.

At the same time, this country holds so much ancestral knowledge around birth.

Midwives from all over the world come here to learn from it.

And I think that’s beautiful, but also…complicated.

Because learning from each other should always come with respect. With awareness. With giving credit to where knowledge comes from.

A name almost everyone in the birth world knows is Ina May Gaskin.

And I don’t want to open a whole debate here, but I think it’s important to say this:

The Gaskin maneuver, something taught all over the world, is often only associated with her name. But the fact that she learned it here, in Guatemala, often gets left out.

And I keep wondering, what if knowledge like this was traced back, acknowledged, rooted in the place it came from?

Would that shift how traditional midwifery is valued here and around the world ? Would it change how much support comadronas receive?

Because at the same time, there is another reality.

Guatemala has a rising cesarean rate, in private hospitals it can be over 90%.

I had a conversation with a Gynecologist and it left me speechless.

He told me, that he doesn’t attend natural births anymore. If a woman comes to him, she can only get a cesarean. She can either agree or go somewhere else.

And I just sat there thinking…How can you, as a doctor, someone who took an oath to care, decide in advance for a women how a she is allowed to give birth?

Not based on her body. Not based on medical need. But based on your own preference?

From an ethical point of view… I struggle to understand that.

And from a woman’s point of view? It feels like something is being taken away. Choice. Trust. The connection to her own body. I also met a young girl who told me that she thought all births were cesareans.

How can that be?

How can we grow up without learning what our bodies are capable of ? Without ever seeing birth as something physiological, and powerful ?

Maybe this is what I keep seeing on this journey, different ways a society sees and understands the female body. What it can do. What it is allowed to do. And who gets to decide that.