"You have the lowest birthrate in the world"
When I called my primary care doctor in Hong Kong, I was afraid we would be too late to get into one of the private hospitals there. Many other large cities in China have fantastic private hospitals that serve their large foreign and "rich" Chinese populations. Beijing United in Beijing and Shanghai and Clifford in Guangzhou, to name a few. Clifford was highly recommended to us, but since we don't have our own car, our savings over Hong Kong would easily been eaten up in travel costs. Clifford is easily a 2-hour drive from Shenzhen.
Shenzhen is a little different. Hong Kong is so close that these services might not be successful. Foreigners will continue to pour into Hong Kong, not trusting a local equivalent. And the Mainlanders who go to Hong Kong would also only go there, too. Our garden is full of families expecting their second and occassionally their third child. For 100,000 RMB, any Mainlander can have their baby in Hong Kong. This is a common path for people living in Shenzhen to have more than one child. They will get a special medical visa to allow them to travel to see their doctor and the hospital. At the time of the baby's birth, the child is automatically granted HK residency, another added benefit. Our garden also has many children that attend HK schools, crossing the border everyday. Their parents might not even have Shenzhen hukou, but that child, often their second is a HK resident, with access to HK schools and HK medical care.
It was April 30 by the time I got in to see my regular doctor in Hong Kong, hoping to get a referral to an OB. Now at 10 weeks pregnant I knew that time was running out. The hospital beds in the HK maternity wards are usually booked 9-10 months in advance. You read that correctly. At some of the private hospitals people will book a room in anticipation of conception. Of course, to compare this to my experience in the US, my last two OB's did not even see me until I was a minimum 10 weeks pregnant.
I had talked to some of the Chinese women in my garden, asking them what hospitals they were using in Hong Kong. I was planning to do some internet research, perhaps to be ready to make the commitment to a hospital at my April 30 appointment. Several were already booked at a Catholic hospital in Kowloon. Was this a possibility for us? I checked them out online and on message boards like geobaby.com. It turns out that they have rules with which Chinese people are completely comfortable and westerners are frustrated. There is no rooming-in, mostly because most of the mothers are in a ward, and the nurses will bring the baby from the nursery if they think you should feed it, or you can make an appointment to see the baby in the nursery. The deal-breaker for Randy, though, was the prohibition of the father holding the baby after delivery and before discharge. Again, this is something that culturally Mainland and Hong Kong Chinese can live with, but if you know Randy, it would kill him. I decided to wait to see what OB I could get and depend on him or her to get us into somewhere.
Among the foreigners in China and Hong Kong, several hospitals are very popular, such as Matilda, Adventist, and Canossa. Of these three, Matilda is the most luxurious and expensive. When I heard people describe some local Chinese hospitals as being "like a hotel," I had to wonder what kinds of hotels they've stayed in. Matilda is like a hotel, like a Four Seasons hotel. This is one hospital that books up 10 months in advance. I know one British-expat woman that tried to book it the day she found out she was pregnant, and it took a lot of politicking to get her in because they were already full for her due date. Eventually she was admitted, mostly because she herself had been born there when her father was working on the MTR in Hong Kong.
At my doctor's office in Central the day before the long May Day holiday weekend, I gave him everything I had from Bei Da. He was Hong Kong Chinese, with a strong non-regional British accent. I asked him that it may be a silly question, but could he read Chinese? He laughed, said he'd "give it a try," and proceeded to be confused by what he read. He was surprised that they only gave me a urine test, so he drew my blood for an HCG level test and a thyroid function test. I have hypothyroidism, which is (in my case) non-serious as long as I take my medication. However, this is not a common (or maybe just not commonly diagnosed) condition among mainland Chinese women as I discovered in my attempts last year to get a refill on my prescription. I knew that this would have been a huge problem had we proceeded in Shenzhen.
My doctor told me that they would get me an appointment with their preferred OB as soon as possible, hopefully immediately after the holiday weekend. She would be able to get me into a hospital, but he said that at 10 weeks into my pregnancy it would be difficult. Matilda is definitely booked already; he could guarentee that without even making a call. That was okay, I told him. We can't afford Matilda anyway.
"But how is it that there may be no room for me to have a baby in Hong Kong? You have the lowest birthrate in the world. If it weren't for foreigners and mainlanders there would be zero births here." I said to him in frustration.
He laughed again. It must have been an amusing appointment for him. He's in a boutique family practice in Hong Kong and some American woman trots in with medical records from a Chinese hospital (something he's never even seen---only a few miles away and he, a doctor, has never stepped foot in a mainland hospital), asking the obvious question--if Hong Kong has the lowest birthrate in the world, why are the maternity wards full?
A few weeks later, a British guy (the husband of the Matilda-hospital-born woman above, actually) conjectured that over the years, many of the maternity wards have been converted to more profitable treatments, like anything with the words oncology or cardiology in the name. As the birthrate dropped (Hong Kong's is even lower than Mainland China's, where one-child is the law. Heck it is even lower than Italy's), maternity departments shrunk, and hospitals that once specialized in maternity services, like Matilda, expanded their offerings to make more money (private hospital) and even receive more subsidies from the HK-SAR government. Sounded reasonable to me. Frustrating, but reasonable.
There are many, many hospitals, both public and private, in Hong Kong that we could be using, but I needed to wait until the next week when I saw the OB which hospital she would get me into. I couldn't book it myself, and then find an OB with privileges there. It just didn't work that way.
The next step, working title "What you white people want."
Shenzhen is a little different. Hong Kong is so close that these services might not be successful. Foreigners will continue to pour into Hong Kong, not trusting a local equivalent. And the Mainlanders who go to Hong Kong would also only go there, too. Our garden is full of families expecting their second and occassionally their third child. For 100,000 RMB, any Mainlander can have their baby in Hong Kong. This is a common path for people living in Shenzhen to have more than one child. They will get a special medical visa to allow them to travel to see their doctor and the hospital. At the time of the baby's birth, the child is automatically granted HK residency, another added benefit. Our garden also has many children that attend HK schools, crossing the border everyday. Their parents might not even have Shenzhen hukou, but that child, often their second is a HK resident, with access to HK schools and HK medical care.
It was April 30 by the time I got in to see my regular doctor in Hong Kong, hoping to get a referral to an OB. Now at 10 weeks pregnant I knew that time was running out. The hospital beds in the HK maternity wards are usually booked 9-10 months in advance. You read that correctly. At some of the private hospitals people will book a room in anticipation of conception. Of course, to compare this to my experience in the US, my last two OB's did not even see me until I was a minimum 10 weeks pregnant.
I had talked to some of the Chinese women in my garden, asking them what hospitals they were using in Hong Kong. I was planning to do some internet research, perhaps to be ready to make the commitment to a hospital at my April 30 appointment. Several were already booked at a Catholic hospital in Kowloon. Was this a possibility for us? I checked them out online and on message boards like geobaby.com. It turns out that they have rules with which Chinese people are completely comfortable and westerners are frustrated. There is no rooming-in, mostly because most of the mothers are in a ward, and the nurses will bring the baby from the nursery if they think you should feed it, or you can make an appointment to see the baby in the nursery. The deal-breaker for Randy, though, was the prohibition of the father holding the baby after delivery and before discharge. Again, this is something that culturally Mainland and Hong Kong Chinese can live with, but if you know Randy, it would kill him. I decided to wait to see what OB I could get and depend on him or her to get us into somewhere.
Among the foreigners in China and Hong Kong, several hospitals are very popular, such as Matilda, Adventist, and Canossa. Of these three, Matilda is the most luxurious and expensive. When I heard people describe some local Chinese hospitals as being "like a hotel," I had to wonder what kinds of hotels they've stayed in. Matilda is like a hotel, like a Four Seasons hotel. This is one hospital that books up 10 months in advance. I know one British-expat woman that tried to book it the day she found out she was pregnant, and it took a lot of politicking to get her in because they were already full for her due date. Eventually she was admitted, mostly because she herself had been born there when her father was working on the MTR in Hong Kong.
At my doctor's office in Central the day before the long May Day holiday weekend, I gave him everything I had from Bei Da. He was Hong Kong Chinese, with a strong non-regional British accent. I asked him that it may be a silly question, but could he read Chinese? He laughed, said he'd "give it a try," and proceeded to be confused by what he read. He was surprised that they only gave me a urine test, so he drew my blood for an HCG level test and a thyroid function test. I have hypothyroidism, which is (in my case) non-serious as long as I take my medication. However, this is not a common (or maybe just not commonly diagnosed) condition among mainland Chinese women as I discovered in my attempts last year to get a refill on my prescription. I knew that this would have been a huge problem had we proceeded in Shenzhen.
My doctor told me that they would get me an appointment with their preferred OB as soon as possible, hopefully immediately after the holiday weekend. She would be able to get me into a hospital, but he said that at 10 weeks into my pregnancy it would be difficult. Matilda is definitely booked already; he could guarentee that without even making a call. That was okay, I told him. We can't afford Matilda anyway.
"But how is it that there may be no room for me to have a baby in Hong Kong? You have the lowest birthrate in the world. If it weren't for foreigners and mainlanders there would be zero births here." I said to him in frustration.
He laughed again. It must have been an amusing appointment for him. He's in a boutique family practice in Hong Kong and some American woman trots in with medical records from a Chinese hospital (something he's never even seen---only a few miles away and he, a doctor, has never stepped foot in a mainland hospital), asking the obvious question--if Hong Kong has the lowest birthrate in the world, why are the maternity wards full?
A few weeks later, a British guy (the husband of the Matilda-hospital-born woman above, actually) conjectured that over the years, many of the maternity wards have been converted to more profitable treatments, like anything with the words oncology or cardiology in the name. As the birthrate dropped (Hong Kong's is even lower than Mainland China's, where one-child is the law. Heck it is even lower than Italy's), maternity departments shrunk, and hospitals that once specialized in maternity services, like Matilda, expanded their offerings to make more money (private hospital) and even receive more subsidies from the HK-SAR government. Sounded reasonable to me. Frustrating, but reasonable.
There are many, many hospitals, both public and private, in Hong Kong that we could be using, but I needed to wait until the next week when I saw the OB which hospital she would get me into. I couldn't book it myself, and then find an OB with privileges there. It just didn't work that way.
The next step, working title "What you white people want."
Comments
That 100,000 RMB figure is pretty close to what I *understand* the extra-child fine/social alimony/whatever you call it in Shenzhen. Compare that to Jiangxi province where one of my friends' sister paid 5000 RMB for her second child.
Seriously?! I would have died, or been arrested after causing a massive ruckus. Our daughter is three months old (heading back to Tianjin in about two weeks). She spent the first month of her life in a Canadian ICU. Except for the first 5 days, we held her for hours every day. I can't imagine facing such a regulation... what's the rationale for it?
The hospital where I ended being booked has two locations, one on HK Island and one in the New Territories. I thought from the literature that my OB gave me that they were identical. I was wrong. The one on HK Island has many private suites to accomodate Westerners expectations of things like rooming-in with the baby and extra beds and pull-out couches for the father and anyone else to stay overnight. The N.T. location was normally unequipped to handle rooming-in. I was the only Western patent there when I delivered and during my stay; many, many others were Mainland Chinese. Many of the nurses spoke Mandarin in addition to Cantonese while some of the doctors could not. My OB worked out an arrangement with them for me to have a private room AND rooming-in, something they normally did not do at the NT hospital (but did, of course at the main HK Island location). A condition of rooming-in was that I was not allowed to let my five year old son touch the baby. Only my husband or I could hold the baby in the hospital.
I was given an overflow Labor & delivery room instead of one of the regular private rooms on a different floor from the nursery. The reason they gave me for not normally allowing rooming-in was because the private and semi-private rooms were on a different floor from the nursery, and the baby would be exposed to too many germs in travelling back and forth in the elevator for bath-time and daily checks.