Story Contributed by Michael Robins

David Berlin is  not quite right. The first gringo kid I know of born in Yelapa was not Sunny Day, but Matthew, Jerry and Mary Beth's first, in 1971. I know this because my own son Nico was born in Vallarta a few months before, my wife Donna having decided it was too risky to stay in Yelapa. Sure enough, when Matthew came—aided by Peggy Mundel and Esperanza the midwife—a problem with the afterbirth occurred, so they sent for Donna late at night, because she had been an obstetric nurse. 

I stayed with our son, of course, sleeping in his mosquito-net-covered hanging cradle—at that time in the house of Ponciano, one of only two up and across the creek in the village—waiting for hours. I tried to stay calm, puffing a little weed but abstaining from raicilla, with a breast-fed infant liable to awaken hungry at any moment. Finally, she returned with the news that Mary Beth had insisted on waiting for nature to do the job without interference; on the next day we learned that it had emerged at last and all was well. I've never been able to decide whether Mary Beth was courageous or foolhardy. Perhaps both.