Almost a year after giving birth abroad in Costa Rica, Hudson finally received his second passport. He is now officially a dual citizen of both the United States and Costa Rica!
Our Birth Abroad Series:
https://youtu.be/uJhDon4wjmg?list=PLC0ux1ndnxRh7jhtQP2AL3JGAMLX0M4yI
Here’s what it cost us to give birth in Costa Rica. We included the OB/GYN, hospital, anesthesiologist, surgeon, and pediatrician.
We didn’t include our flights ($800) and our accommodations ($1300), since we moved out of our house before going down.
This is video is for us to remember our birth experience in Costa Rica , but we thought you might enjoy it anyway 🙂
Part 2 of 4: We did our best to remember all of the questions we had going into giving birth abroad. Looking back, we really went out on a limb coming to Costa Rica without visiting first 🙂
Could we pay with a credit card? What about pre-natal visits? Can you get on an airplane 9 months pregnant? Would they let us through customs? What about the language barrier? Were we taking on too much trying to stay in a hotel room (AirBnb) as new parents?
Of course, everything turned out great. Our OBGYN (Dr. Paer), our hospital (CIMA), and our pediatrician (Dra. Castro) all gave us world class care.
Part 1 of 4: Why we chose to give birth abroad, and why we picked Costa Rica as our destination.
1. Dual citizenship for our son.
2. Permanent residency for us.
3. We’re not happy with American healthcare system.
4. It was cheaper.
5. Options for travel and living in the future.
6. Adventure.
In the next video, we’ll talk about how our expectations matched reality.
Giving birth abroad has been something we’ve been thinking about since backpacking Europe. We discovered the rest of the world is not very accommodating to people with US passports, since we are so strict with immigration here in the States.
We also thought dual citizenship would be an extremely cool/useful/valuable gift we could give our children. After ruling out Europe and Canada, we found Costa Rica.
Our tickets and AirBnb is booked, and appointments are made. This is happening for real!
We’re not the first people to do this:
https://www.ticotimes.net/2015/08/15/west-side-birth-story-isla-arrives-at-cima
https://www.american-european.net/article-moving-to-costa-rica-while-pregnant-297.html
https://puravidaculture.com/having-a-baby-in-costa-rica/
https://familyfreedomproject.com/having-baby-costa-rica/
https://www.welovecostarica.com/public/Giving_Birth_Again_at_Hospital_CIMA_in_Costa_Rica.cfm