Queen Mary experiences

Abitnaive,


Thanks for wanting to share your experiences...

hi, if you post your email address and i will drop you an email shortly.

My dute date is today.....I will be having my little treasure at Queen Mary once he/she decides to start making a move!

When it's all over I will share my experiences of QM with you.

Hopfully it will all be wonderful.

I have to keep telling myself this as I am so nervous, I am trying to keep myself calm.....

Thinking of all you other new mums to be, take care of yourselves and your bumps.

MARB - hope your delivery goes as smoothly as possible. Looking forward to hearing about your experience there.


My wee one is due in September.

hi

my queen mary experiences revolved mainly around the nicu. i can tell you that the doctors at the queen mary are excellent. it is a very clean hospital and if english is the only language you speak (as is my case) there are no language barriers. if you want to bring in your own meals, the staff are very accommodating.


it was tough with the visiting hours, only being able to spend three hours a day with my spouse and then 2 yr old son, but those are the rules. the queen mary is quick to help you with breastfeeding if latching is not going well. they gave me a recipe for fish soup to increase milk supply and i do think it worked.


this hospital has the best facilities and some of the best doctors in hong kong. it is where you want to be and where all other hospitals send their patients when complications arise. it is not the newest or most glamorous hospital, the delivery ward is not a SPA, but they are very very good. they are a bit low on the making mum feel like a superhero most important woman in the world, but they are off the charts in healthcare.



1969 and MARB, congratulations to you both. hope this helps and gives you confidence in choosing the qm.


all best

abn

abitnaive - v. good post. Thankyou for sharing your experiences.


My main reason for choosing the QM is that I was also born there. Bearing in mind this was the 70's, it was still the best place in HK to deliver.


At the end of the day, why should we expect to be treated like superheroes. Yes it is wonderful to bring a life into this world but women have been doing it for centuries.

You wait until you've been thru labour and the birth Vulvic - you'll want to be treated as a superhero(ine)! The fact that women have been doing it forever didn't detract one iota from me thinking I'd just had the hardest labour in the world and that I should be praised endlessly for making it! (There was also the fact that the staff were vastly disorganised and downright incompetent at times which perhaps made me think that my efforts were more heroic than they really were)

LOL! I put off child bearing for as long as I could because from all the stories I've heard its the toughest thing going!! And now close to term, I am of the firm belief that us moms ARE superheros and deserve to be treated that way. I thought initially I would economise and go with the public system, but I really want my reinforcements around me at this time, hubby, midwife, a doctor who would follow my birth plan etc, so I opted for private. I may not have another child at my age, so this is the only chance I get to be "special"!!!


Brass in pocket, anyone?

I was in QMH for a week - 4 days before giving birth which were intensely frustrating from a personal perspective but the healthcare was fantastic. I had a long labour - over 50 hours - and was finally induced but at each step they explained what they were doing and answered all my questions (you do have to ask about some things cos it doesn't seem to cross their minds to tell you everything but I think that's fair enough - I guess some patients don't want to know all the gorey details!) - only at one point did things go crazy in the room and we didn't knwo what was happening but in retrospect I'd rather they were focussing on getting baby's heart beat back up (which was what they were doing) than standing around explaining it to me - it was a little scary at the time though.


Some of the facilities are a little basic, the food is awful and the visiting hours are restrictive but it's the excellent healthcare that I wanted not the luxuries and I really couldn't fault them on that.


They tried hard to follow my birth plan (maybe cos of the long labour they could accommidate my requests more easily!) but in the end everything went out the window and it's getting baby out safely that matters and quite frankly I'd say remain flexible!!!


My only gripe was that I didn't get enough support with breastfeeding and they gave my baby formula in the night. This was partly my own fault as I had been told to feed every 3 hours - this is rubbish for a new born - try every half hour for just 5 mins or so - I should have been more informed myself but that said they did try to actually help me a lot with the latching on etc.


If you're after good healthcare go to QMH

For the luxuries and pampering go to Matilda!


Good Luck

I had a great experience with Queen Mary - after finding out my insurance didn't cover my prenatal care. My husband initially said to go ahead and go private, but the costs were too much and I wanted to have that money for my daughter's college and education fund. (the costs are high...)


I had a great experience - everything that they did there, i double checked with my father back in the US (he's in OB/GYN) to find out if it is standard or not. He said that everything was good and that the care was good.


I noticed that most of my friends who went private had WAY MORE ultrasounds than I did - and I asked my father about this. He said that multiple and repeated ultrasounds are not necessary in normal, healthy pregnancies...and speculated that private HK doctors did more to get more money...(hmmm...interesting...) In the US, insurance is far more regulated and restricted it seems, so those "extras" aren't really prevalent, which made my care at Queen Mary pretty similar to what my father would have done. However, I DID get a detailed scan done on a better machine on my own dime. Queen Mary does a detailed scan but it's on a smaller, less advanced machine than what other private doctors have.


My labor and delivery was wonderful, the nurses and midwives really lovely and helpful, and I had a great experience. The restricted visiting hours are a bit hard to deal with - but in retrospect, it really allows you to focus on your new baby and REST. I had my second baby at a hospital without such restrictions - and boy -= I was wiped out with my daughter coming in at all hours, visitors (well meaning) dropping by at all hours and just the chaos. At Queen Mary, although I was in a ward room, it was just me and my baby - and that's all I had to focus on...


the food at Queen Mary is gross - almost inedible (to me at least) so my mom brought me my meals in.


I felt like a super woman afterwards - those endorphins after you push and pop that baby out - nothing like it afterwards....

Blitzing - fair enough, not had mine yet so am frankly talking out of my hat. As far as the old man is concerned though, will let him know exactly what I am going though, lol.