Welcome to Earth, Pollywog

Please welcome our Mexican baby.

Our son, Leonardo Hugo, was born at 8:01 am in Oaxaca de Juárez. He was delivered via cesarean in a private hospital where he received care as good as we could have possibly hoped to receive in the United States.

Today’s newsletter is a short one because, as you can imagine, we’ve got our hands full. We’ll be in the hospital until tomorrow afternoon and then we’ll drive back to our village northwest of the city.

Leo’s birth is a seismic change in our lives and the delivery itself is something I’ll write about soon. It’s worth covering in detail not just because this is a memoir-style newsletter and it’s a thing that happened to us, but because millions of Americans (if not most Americans?) grew up hearing jokes about Mexican medicine and we’ve been thrust into that system headfirst.

What’s been so fascinating—and I think will be of great interest to you and other people who are interested in Mexico—is that generally, so far, we’ve received better medical care here than we did in the United States. Our doctors are more immediately accessible, more on time, less rushed, and more attentive than most of those we’ve seen in the United States. It’s not what one would expect based on the stereotypes about this country.

Leo’s birth was also remarkable for a reason beyond the exceptional level of care we’ve been receiving: how incredibly inexpensive it’s been. We haven’t used insurance for a single medical bill here and all of our expenses for Leo put together—all of them—comes to about what our co-pay would have been in the United States. In the interests of service journalism, Andrea has agreed that here in this newsletter I can publish a list of our itemized expenses for all of our Leo-related appointments. You’ll be able to see exactly what we paid and, hopefully, I’ll be able to then provide comparable estimates for those services in the United States.

For now, though, I’ll be signing off so that Andrea and I can spend our first evening together with our son!

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