Pregnant migrants in Chicago, isolated and afraid, cobble together prenatal care any way they can

Yeni saw a doctor just twice during her pregnancy — once at the U.S. border and again in Chicago, when a volunteer took her to a health clinic. That was during her ninth month of pregnancy. (Camila Guarda / WBEZ)

Yeni knew something was wrong when she woke up feeling nauseous on a September morning at a shelter on the South Side. Her baby was moving, but Yeni barely could. 

After sending a few texts to her husband and a volunteer she had recently met, Yeni, a migrant from Venezuela who had entered the United States at the Texas border just two weeks earlier, heard the siren of an ambulance.