Korean Job Discussion Forums

madowlspeaks · Joined: 07 Dec 2006 Location: Somewhere in time and space

I just read on Korea4expats that a guy and his wife just had a baby at a hospital and Seoul and after the wife delivered, the baby was put in quaratine
(6th paragraph down).

Is this normal??????

I am due in January and simply can't believe that a hospital would take a
newborn baby away from its parents/mom!!

http://www.korea4expats.com/news-having-baby-korea.html

Unposter · Joined: 04 Jun 2006

I did not read the story you linked so I am unsure of the details...

But, my babies were not quaratined when they were born. My wife is Korean, I don't if that makes a difference or helps.

The best thing to do is talk to your doctor about hospital procedures. I truly doubt they seperate certain babies without medical reason.

Typhoon · Joined: 29 May 2007 Location: Daejeon

Never heard of that in all my years here. It may be a scam to get them to stay in the care facitility for a longer time. Heck, it is a pain to get a birth certificate from birthing facilities here. How can they do that??

ttompatz · Joined: 05 Sep 2005 Location: Kwangju, South Korea

polonius · Joined: 05 Jun 2004

Our son was born 7 weeks early, so he was in NICU for 2 weeks. What hospital are you going to? I highly recommend Seoul National University Hospital. They will respect all your wishes. We started off at Soonchoenhyun hospital in Hannam, but boy do I have stories that would make you run away from it.

You might also want to look into getting extra pregnancy insurance, on the off chance that you have complications. I wish I had.

CentralCali · Joined: 17 May 2007

Korea doesn't do birth certificates. All you have to do is ask for a letter from the administration office attesting to the particulars of the child's birth for your embassy's use and you'll get it. If you ask for a certificate, you might confuse the administration folks.

NightSky · Joined: 19 Apr 2005

denverdeath · Joined: 21 May 2005 Location: Boo-sahn

As others have said, a lot of the aftercare is done by others in the nursery. We had things done at a private clinic, and although not perfect, I think the place did a pretty good job. Most importantly, both baby and mother were in a good state when they left after about ten days. You can look at it as a good thing. From what I could fathom, my wife's natural birth seemed to take an awful lot of energy. You need some rest, so take what you can get as you will not get much for pretty much the next two years. Trust me, they'll be waking you enough to get you to feed the baby. Traditionally, a Korean birth involves a good month of proper aftercare. It's not a big rush to get back to work like it tends to be in Canada. Only take a C-section if absolutely req'd. Tell them to allow you to dilate adequately before getting out the scissors. The process seemed a bit barbaric at times, but it was the first time for me to go through such a process and the outcome was terrific. I guess you could choose to have an induced labor like a doctor of a friend of mine recommended for both of his kids. I would find it highly unlikely that a true quarantine would occur unless there were some kind of extreme circumstances. Do your homework beforehand and get a place that has a good reputation. We also had no problem getting(both English and Korean) birth records that were accepted by the Canadian consulate and local authorities.