When Savvy and I found out that we were giving birth to twins, we knew we wanted to deliver at an international hospital. With the birth of our daughter in Shenzhen, we opted to deliver at a small neighborhood Chinese hospital that friends of ours had used.
Because of its size, most Chinese would not go there, preferring to use the larger, better-known hospitals instead. The downside to the big hospitals was that patients literally waited in line to deliver their babies naturally and there were no private rooms. The quiet neighborhood hospital was by no means slacking on deliveries – the day Reina was born, four other women delivered babies via scheduled C-sections.
Unfortunately for us, our natural delivery got complicated and Reina ended up being delivered via emergency C-section. Though the hospital gave us a large private room with two beds and ensured that Savvy received a steady dose of liquids intravenously, the staff did little else to make life easy the week we were there.
For example, we had to arrange our own meals and completely stock the bathroom as nothing was provided for, not even a hand towel. Had we been warned, this would not have been a big deal, but we didn’t know until the baby was in hand and we entered a very bare hospital room. Not a disaster, but certainly an inconvenience and an untimely lesson in the cultural differences in hospital care. However, for a few thousand RMB, there really wasn’t much room for complaint.
Consequently, this time around, we knew we didn’t want to go for the budget option since twins have a higher chance of being born with complications. Living in Wangjing and not wanting to be far from whichever hospital we settled on, we narrowed our search to Beijing United Family Hospital for several reasons: neonatal care facilities (in case of complications), reputation, location (just 3.2km away from us), and above all, Dr. Masoud Afnan – the head of the hospital’s OB/GYN department.
Knowing we were giving birth at one of Asia’s best hospitals put our minds at ease regarding any “what if something goes wrong” scenarios. They have the training, procedures, and expertise to handle any complications. Indeed, even some of the area’s centers for delivering babies rush mothers in labor to BJU when there is a difficult delivery that they are not prepared for. When things go wrong, you want a hospital with neonatal care units at the ready. And with twins, you want to make sure they have more than one.
As for BJU’s reputation, we have lost count of the number of couples we have met in Beijing that delivered their babies at BJU. I have read some complaints before, mainly about staff not being friendly enough, but I’ve never met anyone who regretted their choice of delivering there. And honestly, out of the dozens of staff with whom we interacted, we only encountered two who seemed overly focused on dealing with the routine at hand and aloof to our emotional state at the time due to sleep deprivation, postpartum emotions, and probably their just not being the most socially-adept in any situation.
But the majority of the staff were the kind of people I wanted to take home with us to help care for our babies and continue to develop a relationship with. One such nurse was Holly, who has been at the hospital for years in the maternity ward. She had such a soothing and in-control presence that I mistook her for the head nurse. Like Holly, it was clear that most of the nurses adored babies and were happiest when assisting with the care of newborns.
Without question though, the single greatest asset the hospital had going for it was Dr. Afnan. His commitment and care to ensuring that all of our questions and concerns were addressed leading up to the delivery was beyond the call of duty and he never rushed us even when he had other commitments to attend to. As we were delivering twins, he even stayed abreast of the latest research out of New Zealand regarding the best time for delivery, since we had to do a scheduled C-section (37 weeks, if you are interested). Dr. Afnan’s calm demeanor, genuine care, and even his bow ties made him the right choice for us.
In the end, our double delivery went off without any complications and both boys are now 4 weeks old and very healthy. I’ll write a couple of more blog posts about the delivery process and the post-op care in the coming weeks, but bottom line, if we had to do it again, and my wife vehemently assures me we will not, we would deliver once more at BJU.
Photo by Chris Lay
