Born in the USA: Venezuelan mother gives birth
Yolexi Cubillan trekked by foot, bus and train over 4,000 miles from Venezuela to Chicago in part so her baby could have a better future.
And last Sunday, the 19-year-old gave birth around 10 a.m. to a 7-pound boy in a hospital room in Hyde Park, with the help from doctors who didn’t speak her language using medical procedures she had never heard of. She was in labor for over 21 hours without her mother — whom she missed terribly — by her bedside.
By that Sunday afternoon, she and her partner Fabián Méndez, 20, sat in the visitation room at a hospital at the University of Chicago Medical Center, adjusting to the new tiny person they called Derick who slept in a plastic carrier on top of a wooden bureau across from them.
“I never get tired of looking at him,” she said in Spanish. “It makes me want to cry. He’s so beautiful, so little, so fragile.”
The Mendéz family is among the more than 13,500 migrants who have arrived in Chicago since Texas Gov. Greg Abbott bused the first group of asylum-seekers to Chicago one year ago. Since then, asylum-seekers have arrived not only on buses sent by Republican governors — who argue liberal northern cities that profess to be sanctuaries should welcome them — but on their own or with the help of charities.
In July, the Tribune followed Yolexi and her boyfriend’s family (plus a dog) on their journey from the border town of El Paso, Texas, to Chicago. On Labor Day weekend their story began a new chapter, with the beating heart from their son, a United States citizen.
‘In those first weeks, I suffered a lot.’
The family of five — Yolexi, Fabián, his mother Esperanza and his two younger siblings — have been in the city since mid-July, when they walked through Chicago’s Union Station after traveling more than two days from El Paso by bus and train. Their overland trip from Maracaibo, Venezuela, took 52 days.
“Little by little, we’re learning to adjust to life in Chicago. But there’s just so much to do,” Esperanza said in Spanish.
They’ve settled on the second floor of a house in Englewood with Hugo Sánchez, the younger children’s father, who arrived last October from Venezuela. But it hasn’t been easy.
They said they’ve had to move multiple times because Hugo’s first apartment didn’t originally have space for them; they don’t know how to ride the bus or train because they can’t read English; and have been rejected from medical and Illinois Department of Human Services appointments because they didn’t know what paperwork to bring with them. They are sometimes scared to leave their newest home because of gang activity in the area.
And as they’ve adjusted to their new home, they are unsure about the process for how to plead asylum, a form of protection that allows those who face persecution or harm in their country of origin to remain in the United States. Esperanza is worried about whether Hugo will make enough painting houses to be able to pay for their rent and food.
And then on Aug. 1, their beloved, part-Chihuahua puppy Milo, who they brought all the way from Venezuela — who survived crossing the Darién Gap, a jungle that is said to be one of the most treacherous migration routes in the world — escaped through a back door after 9-year-old Pedro let him out by accident. He hasn’t been seen since.
While in the jungle on their journey, the family had rescued Milo after he fell in a river. The little dog had crossed through a U.S. Customs and Border Protection port. He had slept at Esperanza’s feet for 18 hours on a train to Chicago.
They searched for him in their new neighborhood, but to no avail.
“En esas primeras semanas, sufrí mucho. Me deprimió. In those first weeks, I suffered a lot. It depressed me,” Esperanza recounted, looking at a photo of the brown-eyed dog on her phone.
In late August, Fabián celebrated his 20th birthday. They made a mountain of arepas — or traditional Venezuelan crispy white corn cakes — and Fabián ate enough to make himself sick.
On another occasion, all five family members took a trip downtown to see The Bean in Millennium Park and Lake Michigan. They have discovered where their neighborhood corner store is, the tree behind the gas station that grows apples and the closest health clinic.
“The buildings here are enormous, the skyline tremendous. But everything is different here. How people speak. How people dress. The customs. Even what type of trash you’re allowed to throw in the street,” Esperanza said.
The streets are so much cleaner here than they are at home, she said.
‘All of my family is over there’
The uncertainty and fear underlying their new living situation did not make for a comfortable third trimester for 19-year-old Yolexi Cubillan.
Without her mother and the familiarity of her hometown Maracaibo, Yolexi had to find comfort elsewhere. She helped Esperanza cook chicken, potatoes and onions for almuerzo, lunch. She hugged Fabián often, flashing braces each time she smiled or laughed.
A week before giving birth, Yolexi chopped onions and stirred a pot of rice on the stove, tossing her head back to flip her long, curly hair out of her face. She said she had been in excruciating pain for days. She grimaced, then put her chin out determinedly and grabbed two freshly made arepas from the stovetop.
“Se la hice a ella, ella,” she sang along to a song by Karol G on her phone, one of her all-time favorite artists, who was performing at Soldier Field on Sept. 15, the day before her due date.
Yolexi hadn’t seen her family for over three months since she left Venezuela with Fabián at the end of May. Her feet were swollen under the weight of her stomach.
She pulled up photos of her family on her phone — her 21-year-old sister Genesis and 14-year-old brother Eudervis. Her cousin, Carla Fernandez, 20, is one of her best friends in the world, she said. Carla has a 3-year-old daughter named Aranza, and Yolexi said she liked watching Carla take care of her.
“All of my family is over there,” Yolexi said. “But in Venezuela, we don’t have good health care.”
Yolexi wanted to have her own child, but was nervous. When she found out she was pregnant, she said she was apprehensive at first. She couldn’t bear the possibility that something bad could, conceivably, happen to her baby.
In her home country, she said, there aren’t resources or supplies to respond to pregnancies like there are in the United States. Women sometimes give birth in the seat of a car or even on the ground, and they don’t receive care afterward. She said many women lose their children.
The sociopolitical and economic crises that has been roiling Venezuela has caused more than 7 million refugees and migrants to flee the country of 29 million, making their exodus the second-largest external displacement crisis in the world, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency.
While the majority of them have landed in Latin American and Caribbean countries, more than 500,000 have made their way into the United States, primarily to cities such as New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago.
The U.S. government currently allows up to 30,000 individuals per month — from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela — to come to the United States for a period of two years. More than 48,000 Venezuelans have arrived since Jan. 5, according to Department of Homeland Security data from the end of July.
Adrienne Pine, an anthropologist and professor at California Institute of Integral Studies, who focuses on cross-cultural approaches to nursing and who recently returned from a trip to Venezuela, said that Venezuelan women, especially in rural areas, are currently struggling to get access to basic medications and health care. Many women she met told her they desperately wanted birth control pills.
“It costs $2 a month, but that’s outside the budget that a lot of women have, so they’re just risking it,” she said.
Venezuela’s social programs have in the past been funded by oil revenues, which have been drastically cut by unilateral sanctions by the United States over nearly two decades, according to a report by United Nations Special Rapporteur Alena Douhan. This has led to a devastating effect on social programs serving the entire population, but especially those living in poverty, women and children.
“Venezuela had some of the best indices in the hemisphere in terms of maternal health care. In terms of pregnancy related care, child mortality and child health,” said Pine. “Infant mortality goes up with the sanctions.”
In Chicago, Yolexi had a health consultation at a local clinic, where nurses gave her the address of a hospital across town that could take her when she went into labor.
Esperanza, a mother of three, also comforted Yolexi in the days leading up to her due date.
“I remember holding my first one. I told Yole that,” she said. “Yo sé qué es eso. Lo que está pasando. I know what that is like. What is happening.”
‘Mami, listen to the sounds of its heart’
Cook County Health, the lead medical provider as part of Chicago’s response to migrants arriving on buses from the border, has seen over 200 pregnant women among the thousands of migrants who have come to the city since last fall, according to CCH spokesperson Alexandra Normington.
But this does not include the pregnant women among the 1,581 new arrivals in police districts or the 472 at O’Hare, awaiting placement in one of the 18 city-run shelters.
CCH provides prenatal care to new arrivals at outpatient health centers across the city, and transportation to and from all medical visits, Normington said.
Because the United States is not seen favorably in Venezuela due to its long-standing sanctions against the country, a baby who is a U.S. citizen may be viewed in the eyes of the Venezuelan government as an enemy, according to Keith Southam, immigration attorney and founder of Southam Law LLC.
“It could help in the asylum application itself,” he said. “So you can tug on the heartstrings of a judge by saying it’s more likely she’ll be harmed in Venezuela because now her child is a citizen of the enemy.”
Early Saturday Sept. 2, Yolexi was going to the bathroom before bed when her water broke. She put her arms up against the door over her head to stabilize her legs and hips, and cried out to Esperanza.
Fabián immediately called an ambulance, which brought her to University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children’s Hospital. It wasn’t the hospital she had been referred to, but it was nearby. There were two nurses in the ambulance who assisted the young family, one who spoke Spanish.
“She really helped both of them,” said Esperanza. “Or rather, the three of them.”
Esperanza wasn’t allowed in the ambulance, and didn’t get to Comer until five hours later when Hugo was able to drive her to the hospital in his car. She barely slept, thinking about Yolexi’s crying gasps of pain and Fabián’s nervous energy getting into the flashing ambulance after her.
The feeling of longing was mutual.
“I didn’t have my mom, but I have her,” said Yolexi about Esperanza. “She helped me go to the bathroom. She helped me with everything. She held my hand.”
The number of doctors, large hospital rooms and machines amazed Esperanza. When Fabián saw the support Yolexi would receive at the hospital, he calmed down.
“Mami, listen to the sounds of its heart, you can feel it!” Esperanza recounted him saying, pointing at the doppler transducer used to monitor the baby’s heartbeat.
In Venezuela, family members aren’t allowed into the room during childbirth, she said. They come after the baby is born, cramming in all at once to give a first round of hellos.
“Everyone in your house, your friends. The whole world comes,” she said, laughing.
At Comer, Esperanza and Fabian sat in chairs, watching the birth unfold from start to finish.
Despite Esperanza’s encouragement and assurance, Yolexi felt scared and alone.
Her own mother had warned her that having a child is one of the hardest things someone can do, but that it would all be worth it when she held the baby in her arms.
“Era complicado y doloroso. It was so complicated and painful,” she said later about the process.
After 21 hours of labor, at 10:04 a.m. on Sunday, Sept. 3, Derick Alexander Cubillan entered the world, held by the hands of doctors on United States soil.
‘There are no words for this feeling’
Yolexi was grateful it was all over, and for the care she received. And when asked how she felt about having a baby born as a citizen of the United States, Yolexi said it was “unbelievable.”
“Pero me hubiera gustado si él fuera venezolano. But I would have liked it if he were Venezuelan,” she said.
Later, in the quiet visitation room, Yolexi and Fabián adjusted to the reality that they had just four visitors instead of dozens. Yolexi FaceTimed her mom, holding Derick tightly to her chest. He slept soundly.
The room was still, and Yolexi glowed with pride. Her curls frizzed in a halo around her head. Fabián gently picked his son up to set him back down in the plastic padded case.
After running a series of blood work and other tests, doctors at the hospital discharged Yolexi two days later with a new bed for infants and tubes of Similac. They told her that after giving birth, she could now be eligible for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC.
“Truthfully, we don’t have everything we need. No blanket, no clothes, nothing,” she said. “We haven’t had time or resources to plan anything.”
Once they got back home, she shuffled around the kitchen, preparing rice and meat and salad. Fabian sat at the table, watching her.
“Es un sentimiento no puedo explicar,” he said about Derick. “There are no words for this feeling.”
Yolexi said Derick cries all night and sleeps all day. His first night at home, she barely slept.
“Now, I will always be there for my child and I will always have this feeling,” she said. “It gives us a reason to live.”
Miles from her family in Venezuela, cradling her baby, she’s singularly focused on the family she’s creating in her new home.
