Me Ganaron

They beat me. Call me wimpy or impatient or spoiled, or just a gringa, but I have admitted defeat. IMSS, the Mexican social security system, wins.

I've been raving about how great it is that Mexican social security provides, by law, 90 days of maternity leave pay. That's right, every working woman is entitled to 45 days of paid maternity leave before and 45 days after her due date. And social security pays the wages. Amazing, right! I mean in the States our nonexistent public health system doesn't give you anything and most workplaces provide only a few weeks paid maternity leave. Here's just the type of family friendly public health policies we lack!

Well, that is until you try to actually access the benefits. After three trips to three different IMSS clinics because they kept registering me with the wrong clinic, a maze of lines and waiting rooms, and a good 10 hours spent just trying to get myself fully into the system and assigned to a doctor, I finally surrendered. It's not just the hours of waiting to make the slightest progress, or the bureaucratic mess of being sent all over the city because of their own errors, or even the fact that I would have to submit myself to a whole other set of doctor appointments and studies which are much more intrusive than the natural pregnancy and birth I'm going for, or even the nonsensical policies they have - like in order to claim your full maternity leave pay you should be seeing the doctor from the first month of the pregnancy (that's right, before you are even sure you are pregnant) and you have to call a month and a half ahead for an appointment (yes, so you need to actually be psychic to do it correctly). No, I think it comes down to the simple reality that the system is stronger than I am.

I simply won't subject myself to more torturous waiting and chasing paperwork and trying to prove how pregnant I am and that I already have a doctor and don't need a whole other set of appointments and that even though I'm a gringa I am entitled to my IMSS benefits. I just can't bear the bureaucracy and pathetic service - the nurses were actually calmly painting their nails while there was a line of people waiting! Not if I don't have to anyway. I'd rather work as long as I can to make up some of the money and let my social security pesos go to help someone who doesn't have a choice but to bear the system. Because the reality is, poor people can't just walk away like I did. This is the only system they've got, God help them.