Assuming the "hospital recommendations..." thread is still active, you MAY want to try the TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) hospital on WuYi Lu. I think it's called the "zhong yi yiyuan". Zhongyi is loosely translated as the TCM Doctor and "yiyuan" is hospital.
MOST taxi drivers know the place. They mix TCM with traditional western medicine, but lean towards the TCM. It's significantly lower cost than most of the other hospitals and has good, reasonable care for both deliveries and post delivery follow up. Cost is about ¥6-8k and they prefer natural deliveries over the c-sections, which are more popular (ostensibly for bikini lines). A c-section costs significantly more and you'll probably be stuck in the hospital for 1-2 weeks in recovery.
As with most Chinese hospitals, you'd better speak Chinese or have an on-call translator. You'll also need to supply your wife AND baby with food or hire one of the many hospital ayi's to help you out (nominal cost). There's a Green Garden restaurant (pricey) that you can have food delivered, from their take-out menu on ZhengYi Lu and Ren Ming Lu, an Islamic restaurant for non-spicy noodles, veggies, fried rice (but no greasy foods for the wife post delivery) AND you'll need to prepare this red thing egg soup (they have hot plates) to provide energy and vitamins post delivery. They hospital Ayi's can help you buy, cook, prepare, and clean the simple cooking things and eating things. I think EVERYONE who delivers babies in Kunming knows these things. You'll also need some high energy chocolate bars for the delivery, in case you go into delivery overtime (snickers bars work well - full of sugar and chocolate/caffeine).
Care is good and they're also a teaching hospital, so expect a small army of interns to duck in at least once a week.
In my personal opinion, most of the major Kunming hospitals are rather identical in terms of care and procedures, so the TCM hospital is popular, on par with the rest, and just less expensive, but again - you'll need good communications skills in Chinese OR an on-call translator.
If you don't have a vehicle or transportation - learn how to use UBER or the other non-taxi limo services to get you there and return you home post-delivery.
On that note - if you need a heavy duty baby stroller specifically for newborns - it's HEAVY but sort of collapsible, drop me a line here or PM (private message) me. I MIGHT be able to convince the wife to just donate it to you gratis.
If this is your first and you live within the 2nd ring road (preferably in the Pan Long district), drop me a line and we can give parenting tips to encourage you during the first 3-6 months - those are the most difficult because of baby's feeding habits (every 3 hours). We did formula with both kids. We used Dr Brown's bottles (glass and or non-toxic plastic) to help reduce gas.
We ordered diapers and baby wipes online - as carrying the boxes and boxes of that stuff is painful and inconvenient, however MOST baby stores in your neighbourhood will deliver if you ask - ESPECIALLY the formula AND they'll give you free gifts when you buy formula in bulk.
We raised our first on NZ formula and the second on the same brand, but made in China. Still pricey, but less than allegedly imported stuff. Wife was paranoid about buying formula online (even from tmall), so we bought formula from a baby store near our home, that we KNEW had been in business for quite some time (there are TWO within about 50 meters of each other).
You'll also need one of those plastic baby bath things (might be able to convince the wife to let ours go as our youngest can now bathe with wifey and prefers the bigger bath tub for maximum splashing joy) and bonding time with mommy.
Get a couple of fluffy but NOT LINTY towels for baby! Don't forget the baby powder and be careful with baby lotion - our kid is allergic to the Johnson's baby lotion. AND you'll need petroleum jelly or a kind of baby cold cream for the inevitable diaper rashes - but if you change the diapers regularly (like before feedings), you should be able to mostly avoid diaper rashes.
We use Pampers diapers, but that's just us...they're pricier, but we've never had problems (ok...we had one bad batch, but the store replaced the entire box with a new one) with leaks.
That's about it for rambling...just PM if you want to meet and or chat.
and remember...luck is NOT a plan...plan ahead, do trial runs to the hospital, regardless of which hospital you choose, and have your grab bags ready to go.
oh...and chinese hospitals tend to be baby machines - so they'll usually schedule your delivery and induce labor if you're too slow or the baby is too comfortable and doesn't want to leave that nice place.
Hope that helps...
China to phase out fossil fuel cars, boost domestic electric vehicle industry
Posted by@geezer
The first paragraph of that news sensationalist alarmist news article:
"...if coal was used to produce the electricity."
University in Yunnan requires students to run 240 kilometers for graduation
Posted by@asatirical
It's no prob...I was actually amused. The leadoff reminded me of Chevy Chase's famous news skits on SNL (Jane, you ignorant....). Apologies for goading you into a massive response. Out of respect, I read it all and concur - but...kids will be kids...sometimes, they just gotta learn things the hard way, in the real world.
As for the professional project management comment - I was commenting on the PM process, not the extraordinarily polarizing debatable aspects of mandatory PE for emerging adults. The university exhibited the core PM processes - which I find unusual with most government organizations and officials (to include USA - not familiar with the shenanigans of other governments, so no opinions there).
Urban re-greening effort to include 37 new Kunming parks
Posted byThis is a fantastic article. Thank you.
University in Yunnan requires students to run 240 kilometers for graduation
Posted byWell...I am after all a failure as a parent...stands to reason...
University in Yunnan requires students to run 240 kilometers for graduation
Posted byDear satyrical bloke
Perhaps it's the brevity of internet blogs - however thank you for broadly insinuating publicly I'm a failure as a parent, based on a singular vague and unimplemented opinion. I'm guessing my personal opinion must have been highly inflammatory to elicit such a highly inflammatory comment.
As a parental failure - I'll use any and all tools available to guide my children towards being self-sustaining, productive, ethical, moral, and responsible citizens of society. If the kids refuse to study at home, do their home chores, are addicted to their digital devices, disrespectful - I'll put them in boarding school jails, where they're forced to study under someone else's oppressive eye, digital devices are forbidden or destroyed, physical daily exercise is mandatory, and their every living and waking moment is controlled.
If university trained/prepared professional life isn't desirable to them, I'll try to guide them into sustainable vocational careers, to include military service.
As a parental failure, I'm also of the opinion that my primary duty is not to be my children's best friend, although perhaps that will come with time and maturity (from both parties - parent AND child) - but to prepare them for a responsible self sustainable life without me, fiscal, environmental, and social responsibility.
We never know how long we can breathe and wander the earth - so yes, I'm absolutely a chronic failure as a parent - better than some - worse than others. So I strive to "parent" with "a sense of urgency".
Incredibly astute of you to pick ascertain my chronic and pervasive failure as a parent, based on a singular, as yet unimplemented opinion of mandatory physical education with a stated and measurable performance metric.
On that note - the university was incredibly amazing in stating and implementing this specific requirement. It showed some potentially incredible project management skills as opposed to the typically vague management directives.