Message to a friend

You, my dear, wrote me on a wonderful day. I know it was by an accident that you wrote me on my birthday, but I didn't get many messages on that day, and yours cheered me up a lot like your messages always do. That's why I've decided to grant you with some special information: I haven't told this to my friends, to my parents or to anyone I work here with - actually only two people know so far, and you will be the third.

I'm pregnant. You know, perhaps, that I've wanted a baby since I was 16, I've wanted a baby very badly since I was 20, and for the last two years I've thought about having a baby all the time. I wanted to do this Central American journey before having children, since I knew it would be more difficult after (even though here I have come to understand that I will probably want to come back here one day with my children, and it is not impossible to volunteer even with children). So it was decided that here, this spring, we would try to get me pregnant - and at first it didn't work, and I got horribly worried. I had read that it doesn't usually happen immediately, but still I worried. And my worrying hasn't actually lessened at all now that I am pregnant. I am terrified of a miscarriage or something else happening to the baby. I'm only almost eight weeks pregnant now, and the first 12 weeks are the most crucial. That is why I don't want to tell anyone; it would be too hard to tell them if something goes wrong. I am also of course not receiving quite the same quality of health care here as I would in Finland, but that worries me only a little. Even here they have ultrasound, prenatal vitamins etc., and the doctor seemed very professional. Abortion is illegal here, so I assume they don't do any examinations either to determine whether the embryo has any defects, in which case the parents might want to abort it, like they do in Finland. But perhaps that's just better.