Ep. 3 - A Swede in Argentina

The Birth Abroad Podcast
Oct 8, 2019
2 min read

Updated: Oct 16, 2019

In today's episode, Lina Lundstedt shares her story of pregnancy and birth in Argentina, including some unexpected challenges in navigating shared care between public and private systems, and the beautiful way her Argentinian family came together to support her and her son in their path to getting him the special care he needed.

Lina met her husband in Japan during a year-long work assignment, and not long after moving back to Argentina together did their baby boy beat all the odds in his path to being conceived. However, several rare conditions identified late in the third trimester ended Lina up on bed-rest, with her son being delivered early via an unplanned cesarean.

“It was very strange that [the cesarean] was so casual for them in a moment that was a really traumatic, absurd experience for me; but I guess, for them, it was just another day at the office.”

Lina was at peace during an otherwise worrisome conclusion to her pregnancy; she had a lot of trust in her care providers, and was very well-supported by her Argentinian family members. However, a complicated and unexpected situation in which she straddled public and private healthcare for her delivery made for a difficult postpartum experience as she and her family worked to get her son the NICU care he needed. Her son was diagnosed at birth with a condition called Esophageal Atresia which required a simple but immediate surgery to correct a malformation of the upper GI tract.