Cleaning up after baby's arrival

Of the many ways to find out what is happening on the San Ysidro or Otay border lines, the best source of current information (and misinformation) is the Facebook group “Como esta la Línea.” The closed group formed by 45,000+ members and counting is used by people who frequent the border and post status updates of what is going on.

“Extra! Extra! A Child is Born on the Border Line,” a student posted a picture to the group on Wednesday at 5:40 a.m. California Border Patrol was in charge of delivering the baby right in front of the inspection booth. The pedestrian border line shut down for 30 minutes for the delivery of the baby until the ambulance picked up the 28-year-old new mother.

“Touchdown! Es Gringo!” was one of the funniest comments on the thread. As of now, no report has come from CBP. The new mother is an American citizen.

This is not the first baby born while waiting to cross the border this year. “The clinic already delivered a baby,” Monica Schroeder of Tijuana Te Quiero told me in June after inviting me to the inauguration of the border line’s first aid clinic. Tijuana Te Quiero partnered with Simnsa medical centers to install a module with paramedics ready to act in case of an emergency in March of this year. On Wednesday, the expectant mother did not stop at the clinic.

Pregnant women crossing the border last minute is a common occurrence. On November 10, a woman had a baby on a bridge in Reynosa before crossing into Mission, Texas.

My sister-in-law stayed in San Diego for the last week of her pregnancy. Her mother, though, drove by herself to San Diego to have her second baby 25 years ago, her water breaking on the way. The traffic back then was much less, and she had the time to make it safely across the border.