our stolen flowers, still going strong after almost 18 years.... (2009, Barrio Candelaria)
My son turns 18 today, and as always, when my kids have a birthday, it makes me think back to the day they were born and I get a little lost in the memories.
When I gave birth to my son, it was 1992 and I had been living in El Salvador for almost 1 year with my husband, Memo. The Peace Accords had been signed a few months earlier, on January 16, ending a long and bloody civil war. We lived in Barrio Candelaria, an old barrio in downtown San Salvador where Memo had grown up. My in-laws lived in the ‘meson’ about a half a block down from where we lived. Memo was employed as a mechanic, making almost $100 a month and I gave evening English classes a couple times a week to the daughters of the wealthy family that lived in the Barrio (the ones who owned the corner store) to help pay for tortillas and drinks to accompany our meals. I spent my days mopping, cooking, washing and hanging the clothes out, tending to the plants in the little cement garden in back of our house, hanging out with my mother-in-law, and doing a lot of reading. It was a nice couple years’ break after college. At that point we didn’t really have any plans. We were just living day to day.
Niña Alicia and I (2009)
The morning of the day that Daniel was born, I had my last visit to immigration where I picked up my residency papers. My mother in law, Niña Alicia, walked over with me. On the way back, we stopped to pick up a ‘faja’ (girdle) which she insisted was necessary for after the baby was born. She said that when a woman gives birth, she gets air inside which puffs up her stomach, and so she needs to wear a girdle afterwards. I wasn’t convinced, but I would always go along with her ideas when they didn’t seem to do any outward harm.
After we picked out a faja (which I realized I would probably never wear once I realized what a faja was) we made our way home, collecting (stealing) snippets of plants from the nicer houses along the way to plant when we got back. We always did that. Niña Alicia had an amazing green thumb, so we always had a nice garden, even though my father in law wouldn’t allow us to break the cement to plant anything in the ground.
We’d left the house around 7 a.m. to do our rounds at immigration and got back at 11. Memo worked in the mechanic shop about 2 blocks from the house, and I was supposed to walk over with his lunch around then. But I seemed to have a bit of a stomach ache. It was 9 days earlier than my April 30 due date, so I didn’t realize it was labor kicking in. I laid down on the bed for a bit to see if it would go away, our cat, Irola, curled up next to me. Cats always know when something’s going on. After a bit, I got up and made my way over to Niña Alicia’s house and told her I thought we needed to get the midwife, and could she please let Memo know that it was time (and take him his lunch).
Daniel and Memo
Early on I had decided that I wanted a home birth. My other options were the public maternity hospital or the social security hospital, and at that time my Spanish wasn’t so great. I worried that the male doctors would come over and gawk at me out of curiosity – I’d certainly had enough men staring, groping and asking rude questions while fully clothed and even while very pregnant – and being a spectacle at the hospital didn’t appeal to me at all. I also didn’t want to sit on a bed with several other women in the crowded maternity ward waiting for a bed to give birth in. I didn’t want to give birth alone, and no family members were allowed in. I didn’t want to be medicated and didn’t trust that they would listen to me about that at the hospital. And I wanted to exclusively breastfeed and keep my baby with me, and I had heard that the hospital always took the babies away and gave them a bottle of formula right away. I had a bunch of books about midwifery and birth. I read them voraciously with the idea that I could learn enough to practically give birth by myself if necessary.
The midwife, Niña Lita, and her daughter got to the house within about an hour. Niña Lita was a wizened old woman with crinkly eyes and a sweet smile. She said she was a Mormon, but she would invoke the Virgin Mary before she worked on anything important. She had been coming to the house for the past several months to check in on me and to ‘sobarme’ (massage my belly). She’d look up to the sky, say some prayers to La Virgen, warm her hands with scented oils and start massaging. She’d tell me she felt the head here, the arm there. Her goal was to help the baby get into the right position. (A few years after, there was a big public education campaign against midwives and traditional practices, saying that this was a bad thing to do, but it doesn’t really seem too harmful to me.) The monthly visits helped us get to know each other and develop trust and a bond.
When she arrived to the house to help with the birth, Niña Lita patiently watched and waited and softly encouraged me. Luckily my labor was only about 4 hours total. I kept waiting for Memo to show up, but he never did. Later I realized that they didn’t want him to be there. They said that if there were too many people around, the baby would get embarrassed and wouldn’t come out.
Daniel was born right around 3 p.m. Niña Lita cut the cord, cleaned him up and wrapped him in a blanket while my mother in law ran to the corner store and borrowed the metal scale that they used to weigh beans, rice and sugar because I insisted on knowing how much Daniel weighed. Niña Lita carefully placed him on the balance while Nina Alicia held it up. Nine and a half pounds. About that time they let Memo come in and went on their way, saying they’d be back tomorrow to bathe Daniel with rose and rue to ward off any bad energy or bad spirits.
The next day after the bathing process (rose and rue is one of the most delicious scents in the world) we went to the Health Center to get Daniel’s first check up and vaccines. A couple weeks later, we went to the City Hall to register his birth. At that time they wouldn’t let anyone in dressed in shorts, so Memo had to wait outside while I registered Daniel and people looked on in disapproval because a father is supposed to take on this responsibility.
I had the luxury of spending the next 40 days resting with Daniel. My mother-in-law went to the market, bought cocoa beans, and ground them into fresh homemade chocolate to drink hot to bring down my milk. I remember eating a lot of mangos de leche too, those small yellow ones that are in season in April. There were certain foods prohibited for the 40 day period, including eggs and beans and anything strong smelling or strong flavored.
Every day I was supposed to give Daniel a spoonful of garlic oil that Niña Alicia had prepared so that my breast milk wouldn’t upset his stomach, but I only pretended to do that. I was also instructed to tie a ‘faja’ around Daniel’s waist (a folded piece of cotton) to keep his new belly button clean and avoid any flies or germs getting on it, and also to keep his belly button from being an outie (I stopped doing that after a day or so because I was worried it would get infected and figured it needed some air to dry out — ironically he has an outie). I was supposed to also shape his nose and his head two times a day by rubbing baby oil on my hands, heating them over a candle, and pressing lightly to round his head and straighten his nose.
Daniel was to wear a red hat, red socks and a red bracelet with a large grey seed on it to protect him from anyone with a strong gaze who might give him ‘ojo’ (evil eye) and terrible diarrhea. And anyone who saw him was supposed to hold him so that in case they had any underlying jealousy due to his infant beauty, it would fade out and their bad feelings wouldn’t do him any harm. I was supposed to bind him up tightly so that he would not get bowlegged, and I was scolded when I held him upright because it would make his cheeks sag down. I had to wear socks for the 40 day period to avoid getting air in my feet which would swell my legs and stomach. I wasn’t supposed to eat dry foods like cookies or bread while breastfeeding, because the crumbs would block up the milk stream. If I was angry or upset, I was not supposed to breast feed or the baby would get cholic.
All those rituals were something that I wasn’t sure I believed in, but they added meaning and history to Daniel’s birth. They helped us feel that he belonged to a long line of babies that had come before, and I didn’t mind them at all. I was surrounded by people who loved babies and wanted to hold Daniel every chance they got.
Daniel, after almost 18 years (2009, Barrio Candelaria)
We didn’t have any money, so we didn’t have any of those typical things that accompany babies in many families. We had no bottles, diaper bags, disposable diapers, baby food, high chairs, strollers, infant seats, cribs, car seats, playpens, jumpy chairs or the like. As he grew, Daniel continued to sleep in our bed, and when he started eating table food, he would sit on our laps and eat from our plates. He was held and carried until he could walk, and then he walked until he was tired and was carried again. He was never strapped in and confined – he learned boundaries without physical restraint. And I have a little theory — that this helped him learn to manage freedom and establish internal boundaries and limits. (Don’t get me started on parents who put leashes on their kids!)
Daniel played outside in the alleyway. He got dirty. He got scraped and bullied. But there was always a neighbor around to call over to one of us: ‘Niña Liiiindaa, Daniel is playing in the dirty water!’ ‘Niña Aliiii, Daniel is jumping up and down on an ant hill!’
When we moved back to the US in 2001 and I saw women struggling to manage work and day care and all the accessories associated with babies, I realized how privileged we were in those early years. Daniel talks about those days too. He realizes how lucky he is to have grown up in the Barrio, like those little snippets of plants Nina Alicia and I would pick up on our long walks and that still thrive in front of her house, 18 years later.
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