One reason it's awesome to live in Guatemala City while pregnant, and one reason it's not

How many pregnant women, at one point in their pregnancy, have said something like this:

"I really wish ____________(insert favorite restaurant or cafe or fast food chain) would make home deliveries."

Here in Guatemala, this is a reality. Use your imagination. Just about everything you can think of delivers, not just pizza or expensive flower shops.

Burger King

Wendy's

McDonalds

Kentucky Fried Chicken

Steak houses

Mexican, Chinese, Italian, Japanese restaurants

Fruits and vegetables delivered to your door

Hot dogs

Local dairies

Sushi

Bakeries

Sandwiches

And it's not just limited to food:

Dog groomers

Pharmacies (we once had our antibiotics delivered to our home, a free service)

Flowers

Car radios

(to name a few)

There's this really great system where every business who offers this service has one phone number. When I call, they figure out what neighborhood I live in, take my order, and inform the closest restaurant to us to send us the delivery. On motorcycles. 

The food gets packed in these boxes loaded on the back of motos. You see these driving all over the city.

There are two things that are lacking from this list, in my opinion: espresso drinks (for example, I doubt Starbucks will whip up a latte and send it in a moto), and ice cream (mainly, Dairy Queen blizzards would be awesome). It's possible that many of the above food places deliver ice cream, but sometimes what they can deliver is limited, and my guess is ice cream might be one of those exceptions. But, I haven't actually tried yet, so I could be totally wrong.

I found a website called tengohambre.gt (translation: I'm hungry). You enter your location, look at the list of restaurants available for home delivery in your area, call and place an order. Presto!

Recently I saw an advertisement for a local cheesecake shop. And of course, the magic words, a domicilio, which signifies they will deliver to your home.  Seriously, hasn't every pregnant woman, at some point said, "I really wish someone could bring me a cheesecake. I need cheesecake. RIGHT. NOW."

This brings me to one reason I've discovered that it's not awesome to have a baby here: no one here seems to have picked up on the amazing, life-giving, miraculous American tradition of providing meals to families with newborns. With both of our girls, friends set up a schedule and every other night for several weeks we received meals already cooked and ready to eat. This was such a huge blessing that at times I thought it was worth having a baby just to get so many people to cook for us! But alas, here in Guatemala, this doesn't happen. Usually the grandmother of the newborn shows up for a couple months and does all the cooking and cleaning for the house. That isn't going to happen here as neither of our moms can come take over our house for 2 months! Fortunately, I have a whole list of places I can call to bring me meals when I'm too overwhelmed with a newborn to make anything more than cold cereal. Or, when I just feel like a piece of cheesecake and want to blame it on a "craving."