Why Asking for a Medical History of Your Child’s Birth Family May Not be as Helpful as you Might Think

Most adoptive parents we work with say that one of the objectives they have in searching for birth family is to learn about their child’s family medical history.  It sounds reasonable and is certainly something as parents we feel like we should know.  But how many of us have had to leave blanks when filling out medical history forms for our children or tell our pediatricians that we just don’t know certain facts about our children?

For most of us, having a family medical history is a “nice to have” that would make us feel like we can fill in the blanks for our children and maybe even arm ourselves with information to help us keep our kids healthy.  For others who have children with serious illnesses having a medical history can be much more than that.

But unfortunately no matter how much an adoptive family might want or need a birth family medical history, it isn’t as simple as just asking the birth family.

The truth is that qualified medical care is sorely lacking for most birth families. While healthcare is technically free in Guatemala, many birth families do not live close to a free clinic and do not have the money to pay for transportation. If they are able to borrow money to travel to a clinic, while the visit is free, they do need to pay for medications which are very often out of their economic reach or just not available.  As a result, many rural birth families rely on local healers which are lay people who have some experience in treating illnesses with medicinal plants and home remedies but who can’t offer a medical diagnosis.

It’s not uncommon for a birth mother, when asked what someone died from in her family,  to reply “stomach pain” or a “bad cough” and to say the person had suffered but never saw a doctor and then died.  

Even in cases where the birth family member is able to visit a clinic and purchase medicines, due to language and educational differences the family may often not understand the actual diagnosis.  And there is no guarantee a diagnosis is correct given the limited training of staff in the public clinics.

So while a medical history is part of the standard search interview, nine times out of ten the report will bear the phrase: “there are no contagious or chronic illnesses in the family” and nothing more, as this is pretty much all the birth family can share.

One common and potentially useful exception is the diagnosis of diabetes which has an incidence rate of 11% among Guatemalans (comparable to the 10% rate of Americans).  It is fairly common for members of a birth family to have a diabetes diagnosis which may or may not be treated.

As with most things in Guatemala and adoption, precise answers to questions about medical history are not as easy to come by as one might hope, but given the realities of life Guatemala it is understandable.

Abrazos,

Velvet

Corn, Tamales and Families

If there is one food that comes to mind when I think of Guatemalan cuisine - it would be the tortilla.  There are lots of well-known regional dishes such as Pepian and Kaquik, but it’s the tortilla that you’ll find everywhere - from the streets of Guatemala City to the highland villages in the north to the low-lying towns on the coasts.  Not that big, flat flavorless tortilla you find in Mexico, but the smaller, hand-patted, grilled, delicious, corn version.

Guatemala’s history with the corn used in tortillas goes back to the days of the ancient Maya, who believed that the gods created humans out of corn. They practiced rituals involving corn to express deep gratitude toward the gods and the sacred crop.   Atole, a corn-based drink, is still offered by farming families to the gods in many Mayan Communities.

Today it’s hard to walk down a street at mid-day in Guatemala without catching a whiff of tortillas grilling on a comal - the flat metal “stove-top” used to grill tortillas - parked in the doorway of a tortilleria.  Tortillas are a staple at breakfast, lunch and dinner in Guatemala. Even the popular Guatemalan fast-food chain Pollo Campero has resident local women parked on either side of the entrance selling hot, fresh tortillas to entering customers to enjoy with their fried chicken and fries. I’ve sat at many birth family meetings where the birth family waits patiently after the food has been served, not touching so much as a fork, until Fide or I remember and run out front to buy a stack of tortillas.  Once the tortillas are on the table the meal can commence.

While tortillas are a big part of many Guatemalan meals, for many poor Guatemalans the tortilla (with a bit of salt) IS the meal. Rural Guatemalans rely heavily on corn crops to sustain themselves and many have small plots of corn which they harvest to provide corn to make tortillas and feed their families year round.  Every community has a community corn grinder where women take their shelled corn to be ground into the masa they use to make their tortillas.

On Fide’s recent trip to the Izabal area to deliver food baskets with letters and photos from adoptive families, a group of birth families asked her for a meeting.  At the meeting they wanted to know more about how the new Association works and if there was flexibility in the supplies being provided.  They talked about how the ongoing Central American drought has destroyed the corn crops on which they rely so heavily to feed themselves and their children. (You can read more about the drought in this article from the BBC).   They wanted to know if it was possible to receive corn in place of some of the regular basket supplies on future visits.  

Fide explained about the Association and told them she would be happy to figure out how to replace supplies on her next visit with additional corn.  This made the families happy.

The visit reports that went back to adoptive families shared this news. Several of those families asked if there was something more that could be done sooner for the birth families.  In that spirit, we decided to launch a Crowdrise campaign to raise funds to buy corn for families affected by the drought.  Fide will use any funds we raise to purchase corn and deliver it to families we work with who are impacted by the drought.

If you can help with a donation or by sharing the link to this campaign (https://www.crowdrise.com/help-guatemalan-families-affected-by-drought1/fundraiser/velvetbeard) with your friends and family, it will go a long way to help families in Guatemala. And thank you for that!

Abrazos,
Velvet