SAN ANTONIO — A Dallas family has been making an annual trip to San Antonio to commemorate the birth of their daughter, not in a hospital, but a hotel room.
"This is my room," five-year-old Laura Tettmann declared as she stepped up to room 1504 in the Riverwalk Courtyard by Marriott.
KENS 5 last checked in with Laura and her family for her first birthday, when the tradition began.
Hotel General Manager Dinesh Rao said that when he trades stories with other people in the hospitality industry, the story of Laura’s birth is always a popular one.
"We've hosted our fair share of weddings and brides to be, but to have a baby born in the hotel, that's a very unique circumstance," Rao said.
In 2018, Laura’s parents Ricardo Tettmann and Flavia Amorim came to the Courtyard by Marriott Riverwalk to introduce some friends to San Antonio. On july fifteenth on the fifteenth floor, they were introduced to their daughter.
"she went to a doctor, doctors said. ‘Don't worry, you're not going to have your baby on a road,’” Ricardo said. “Yeah, he was right. It was not in a road."
Laura was born right there in the room. Paramedics came and brought mother and baby to the hospital, but another challenge was waiting for them.
"We were like, 'okay, where's the person that going to register her, her birth certificate, her social," Ricardo said. "you know the documentation that regularly you get from the hospital. And they were like, Oh, I'm sorry, but we can't do anything to y'all because she wasn't born in the hospital."
They learned they would need to make an appointment with San Antonio birth and death records. The first one was more than a month out.
"We would have probably to come back and forth a couple of times and I was like, I can't be traveling this much with a newborn baby,” Ricardo said.
They managed to get it taken care of before heading home, but Flavia says the stress over her daughter’s paperwork was even greater than the birth.
“God put an angel on our way,” Flavia said. ”Because this lady that works at that place - the civil department place - she was able, even though I didn't have an appointment, she was able to see us.”
Despite the stress, Ricardo says they've made a tradition out of coming back to the room where it happened. So far, missing two years during the COVID pandemic.
the tough moments, it turns into a good memory now,” he said. " The hotel everybody when she gets here, everybody's so welcoming to her.”