Baby Time and Visiting Hours at HK hospitals

I just went on a tour of Union Hospital in Shatin. The facilities looks decent and the price is reasonable, but I was really turned off by some things regarding my baby time.

1) My baby will stay in the nursery 100% of the time, where the nurses will tend to it, and it seems, if I'm lucky, I'll be able to take part. If I get a ridiculously-priced private room the baby can stay in it for a few hours at a time only.

2) Visitors can only look through the glass at it.

3) worst - my husband can only visit it face-to-face for 30 minutes a day, assuming he can take those days off work.


I am concerned that we'll lose out on bonding time at a crucial time, breastfeeding opportunities, and basically any control over our baby.

Are ALL hospitals in HK like this?

I know the VIP birthing centre in Guangzhou (I'm based in SZ) gives everyone a private room and the baby stays in the room full time. I'm just not sure about their medical care but will be looking into that soon. And all of this is for a fraction of the cost of HK.

Can anyone shed some light on this, please?

Thanks~

Yes, unfortunately, money is a big problem. We don't have the 100K it would take to stay at 'hotel matilda', hehe.

The point of my post was to ask people if they knew of hospitals that weren't like this. Since I'm not based in SZ and work, it's hard for me to go around HK visiting all the hospitals.

If I were based there, I'd probably just go the public route too, lucky you~

I think public hospitals in HK now have a 2 hour visiting window, 6-8pm, still awful but better than 30 mins, and it used to be that the mothers had the choice of sending the babies to the nursery or having them with you. But you could come home within a few hours. In the UK now its not unusual to go home after 12 hours for a normal delivery.

I had my last 2 kids here as a private patient in a public hospital, the babies could stay with the mum the whole time, and all day visiting, but that was before sars. I stayed in 1 night with one of them and came home the same day with the last one.

Also try and be firm with want you want, several things I was told when I was pregnant here I disagreed with like routine episiotomies, giving birth in the lithotomy position, I told the doctor I wasn't happy and wouldn't agree to them, he was fine about it and actually said ' that it was really aimed at their local mums'. I wrote a birth plan which was pretty much kept too, and both births were midwife deliverys (the public system way).

If you choose to stay in for a short time then the bonding process won't be a problem, and if the baby goes to the nursey then at least you can catch up on some sleep, ready for when you get home.

Hi Jallore,


I had my son in St Tereasa's (near Mongkok) May 2007. It's considered private. The nurses were nice & helpful (and understoood English), the rooms & bathrooms weren't too bad.


If you want to have your baby with you 24 hours from birth, then you have to take the first class room (basically a double room, but you will be alone). All other classes will require the baby to be in the nursery - which is pretty sad that people have to gather at the windows to see the bub. And of course worse that daddy or grams can't hold the baby.


I had an elective c-section, which costs in total about HKD 75 000 (I stayed 5 nights as my son had jaundice, and we decided it was better to stay a couple more days for observation)


Hope this helps.

At the POW public they encourage you to have babies with you and help you to establish breastfeeding.The visiting is on a night for about 2 hours,with the money you save you can have home visits with Annerley midwives .I had Hulda she's great,the POW is a teaching hospital and has all state of the art equipment there.If money is no problem go private but a lot of private hospitals don't have emergency facilities.