User Comments - chinachica

Posted on: Pregnancy Series 3: Prenatal Checkup

My friend had her baby in Beijing which was born in water, and she told me about it.  She gave birth at a foreign hospital there, I'm sure they dont have it in regular chinese hospitals. 

Here in Denver they don't have many hospitals that allow it, only the University of Colorado hospital has it as an option.  For those of you who are pregnant, check it out, it is much easier way to deliver. 

I really love these lessons.  My husbands family all lives in China, and I have faced some cultural differences.  Of course the big one is "keeping the month", he is getting all kinds of instructions from his mom and aunts.  He even tells my mom the cause of all of her issues is because she didnt keep the month with her children.  So that will be interesting after the baby is born. 

One thing that would be interesting is to find out do they give the father anytime off after the baby is born?  My husband gets two weeks of paternity leave.  In-laws would be another topic, though that has been covered in quite a few topics. 

One thing that is really interesting is sharing the news with everyone, how do you go about telling your boss, acquaintances, co-workers your pregnant.  For people who are not close to you, its hard to slip it into a conversation.  I guess you can wait until you start showing! 

You can have lesson on strangers commenting being nosy and asking all kinds of personal questions.  And picking out baby names, naming is a real difficult in China.  (We are going to give him an English name, and have his parents give him a Chinese name)

I will probably have more ideas as I get farther along.

Thanks for all the well wishes!  So far, so good, I havent had too many symptoms yet.

Posted on: Pregnancy Series 3: Prenatal Checkup

Im so glad that chinesepod has these lessons right now since I am pregnant.  Even though I am not in the upper intermediate level, chinesepod has helped me out a lot.  Especially with telling my in-laws that we are having a baby! 

The experiences of doctor visits when you are pregnant are very different in the U.S. vs. China.  The guys having to be outside during exams, ultrasounds, etc.  I guess they probably wont allow them in the room during the delivery too!  You can have as many people as you want to invite in the delivery room here.

My baby's due date is September 13th.  And we are going to have a water birth.  It would be cool if you include that in the dialogue somehow!

Posted on: Insect Market and Having a Baby

Congrats John B, I want to know if your wife is planning on keeping the month zou yue. I think they say that usually the mother of the husband is the one who determines if they keep the month or not. Well lucky or unlucky for me my husband is chinese and thinks that something will happen to me if I don't keep the month. I guess thats part of the reason why I have not gotten pregnant yet, I do want to take a shower after giving birth! Maybe when you do a follow up DA about the baby's birth you can maybe talk about it. Here is an article about it. http://www.earthmamasweb.com/articles/pregnancy/post.htm

Posted on: Tattoos, TV and the Stock Market

Facial hair they think makes you look old! I have a picture at my wedding of my dad and my brother. My brother has one of those fumanchu (sp?) beards and they thought he was my dad and my dad was my brother. If you are working with Koreans it might be good to have a beard. A Chinese/Korean friend of mine grew out an ugly, scrawny beard just so that he could look older and treated with more respect. So it might work to your advantage to look older!

Posted on: MSN and QQ

I particularly like MSN. Maybe cause I'm 30, and not a college kid anymore. And most of my friends in China use MSN, but I lost touch with a lot of the students I taught, probably because they use QQ. I did try Skype for a Chinese online school, they used it for live tutoring, and it seemed to drop alot of calls. My favorite is MSN.