Text/Chen Yuqi
"Pregnancy is exhausting, childbirth is cruel, the process of recovery, that is embarrassing." In 2020, the Korean drama "Postpartum Conditioning Hospital" told the adaptation process of an elderly woman entering a postpartum conditioning hospital after giving birth.
Source: Korean drama "Postpartum Conditioning Hospital"
In 2018, Wang Wang became pregnant for the first time, and she made up her mind early on to live in the confinement center. Tight confinement centers that usually require advance reservations. 5 months pregnant, she pulled her husband to start visiting the confinement center. "The first time I got pregnant, I didn't know exactly what to pay attention to when confinement was confinement, and I felt that professional places would do better."
The confinement center has a comfortable and high-end environment, the concept of "scientific confinement", and the so-called professional and meticulous nursing services, so more and more women like Wang Wang are not willing to pay for the high-cost confinement center after experiencing the pain of childbirth.
According to data, the median price of the North,100-Shenzhen-Hangzhou Confinement Center is more than 50,000 yuan, the middle and high-end level is not less than 70,000 yuan, and there is even no shortage of "sky-high" packages with a price of 200,000 yuan or even 480,000 yuan. Despite this, some insiders said that 95% of Yuezi Center stores are struggling with losses.
In addition to the soaring unit price of customers, "frequent chaos" is another label of the confinement center. In March, the incident of a mother-and-baby care club in Shiyan, Hubei Province, causing a 28-day baby to be fractured by a baby that caused concern, once again putting industry chaos on the table.
Why is the seemingly profiteering confinement center still a loss-making business? Can the confinement center, which has been repeatedly in a crisis of trust, really allow women to sit in confinement with peace of mind?
"Staying in the center of the confinement, I want to be clean"
Wang Wang finally booked the most expensive suite in a confinement center near his home, and the cost of staying for 28 days was 120,000 yuan. Southeast Asian decoration style, balcony and tatami mats, on the day of the visit, the sun from the transparent glass floor-to-ceiling windows into the room, let her heart beat.
At the end of the last century, the concept of confinement center was introduced to the mainland from Taiwan. It was not until 1999, when Beijing's first professional confinement center, Beijing Mother Confinement Center, was established, that the confinement center began to start in Chinese mainland. Before that, living in the house was the mainstream solution, but with the price of the monthly wife rising, it was no longer easy to find a reliable sister-in-law.
Li Qing, who has worked at the confinement center for 8 years, once imagined how to be most comfortable if she was confined at home. She came up with such a staffing arrangement: the family is responsible for meal purchase, a sister-in-law is responsible for taking care of the pregnant mother, and a nursery teacher is responsible for taking care of the baby, the nursery is only on the day shift, and the sister-in-law lives at home.
To achieve such a staffing, it is necessary to have both a large enough space and a wallet with enough drums. As a result, full-service confinement centers became an alternative.
The services provided by the confinement center are highly similar: three meals and three snacks per day; obstetricians and pediatricians make regular rounds; professional maternal and infant care, nursing staff provide bathing, touching, swimming and other items for newborns, obstetricians provide pregnant women with postpartum rehabilitation experience projects such as milking, shampooing, postpartum sweating, uterine rejuvenation, pelvic repair, etc.; and also provide additional services such as baby photos and full moon parties.
In addition to a professional package of services, avoiding conflicts with parents is also another consideration for many expectant mothers. Can't wash your hair, can't touch water, eat meat for supplements... The confinement experience passed down by the older generation of parents is no longer easy to use here for new mothers.
Zhao Min didn't spend much time with her mother-in-law, and she only saw her three times a year. Tu Qingjing is the biggest appeal of her living in the confinement center, and she wants to avoid getting along with her unfamiliar mother-in-law day and night and having conflicts.
Zhao Min set up a Yangmian suite for 42,800 yuan / 28 days, and the confinement center she chose was a single-family building opened in a health resort, and the confinement center had its own kitchen.
"Three meals and three points" provided by the confinement center (photo provided by the interviewee)
At the confinement center, maternal feelings are a top priority. Zhao Min decided to feed pure milk powder during her pregnancy. During the hospitalization, the nurse repeatedly came to persuade her, constantly introducing the benefits of breastfeeding, seeing that she had made up her mind, and then turned to persuade her husband.
But after coming to the confinement center, no one advised Zhao Min to breastfeed. Her daily life is to eat, sleep, watch dramas, play mobile phones, and learn parenting knowledge from nurses. At night, the baby slept with the nurse in the living room, and Zhao Min and Mr. Zhao slept in the bedroom, and they rested well during the whole confinement period.
Confinement Center, worry or bad?
"I don't think any of the sisters-in-law in the confinement center can meet my heart." Wang Wang felt that although he spent more than 100,000 yuan to set the most expensive package in the confinement center, he did not rest well at all, and the baby did not take good care.
Searching on social media, it can be found that many new mothers make long lists and share their experiences when booking confinement centers. Netizens summarized the "minefield" of the confinement center, including unprofessional nursing staff, postpartum repair projects of chicken ribs, and frequent access of staff to disturb rest.
There are more than 420,000 notes related to the "Yuezi Center" on the "Little Red Book" (Source: Little Red Book)
Xia Shasha is a confinement center salesman, priced at more than 100,000 yuan and 50,000 or 60,000 yuan confinement center, she has worked. She introduced that when the concept of "confinement center" first emerged in the mainland, it was mainly based on the custody system, and nurses centrally managed the baby in custody. But Shasa doesn't recommend this model, and most of the incidents in the news about cross-infection of babies occur in confinement centers that use centralized care.
In order to avoid the risk of cross-infection, in recent years, the one-to-one system of mother and baby has become the first choice for mothers, that is, full-time confinement or nurses are equipped for mothers, mothers and babies are room-in-room, and confinement sisters take care of babies and mothers at the same time, and nurses, doctors, nutritionists, obstetricians and other personnel perform their duties. Many confinement centers promise that women can change their confinement at any time until they are satisfied.
During the confinement period, the king changed his sister-in-law twice. The staff of the confinement center claimed that the second month sister-in-law was experienced and well received, and the boss's relatives and friends came to confinement and used her.
Unexpectedly, the first time the sister-in-law fed, the baby spit up. Seeing the baby squirting and spitting up milk, Wang Wang, who was a mother for the first time, was about to cry. The sister-in-law explained that it may be because the baby has just cried and there is air in the stomach.
After that, the baby frequently spits up. The doctors and nurses at the confinement center said that after feeding, they should hug for a while, first hold horizontally for at least half an hour, and then burp vertically. The child thus developed the habit of sleeping in a hug, and the king was worried about holding the baby.
Later, Wang Wang learned the concept of "overfeeding". In the baby's growth stage at that time, the normal amount of milk should be 80 to 100 ml / meal, and the sister-in-law fed 120 to 150 ml per meal, the child can not absorb. Until now, the baby's spleen and stomach are not very good, and Wang Wang feels that it is the root of the disease left by overfeeding at that time.
As an anxious novice mother, although the baby can sleep with the sister-in-law at night, the king still moved the baby's cot to his side, as soon as the baby moved, the king would sit up nervously, and the sister-in-law who slept in the next room was getting lazier and lazier. "The child was already crying, and she couldn't come over. I was very irritable and said, 'Auntie, don't you just want to come and see', and she will come over. ”
One night, Wang Wang was awakened by breast swelling pain, he couldn't touch it, the sister-in-law and the nurse on duty couldn't help her relieve it, and there was no professional breast nurse in the confinement center. Wang Wang was very annoyed, and he called the outside lactator, who helped her drain the milk three times and five times divided by two.
What makes Zhao Min uncomfortable is the maternity doctor who frequently comes to the door of the Confinement Center. Under normal circumstances, the confinement package only contains some entry-level health care items, such as shampooing, milking, lochia, etc., such as pelvic floor muscle repair and other items can only be experienced once or twice to experience the purchase.
When the obstetric director rounds the room, the obstetrician always follows alongside, repeatedly urging Zhao Min to say that because she is a caesarean section and does not feed breast milk, her uterus recovers very slowly, and her rectus abdominis muscle separation also has two and a half fingers, if it is not repaired in the golden repair period of confinement, it may leave permanent sequelae.
The obstetrician was also there. Therefore, Zhao Min went to experience a uterine rejuvenation project highly recommended by the obstetrician. The obstetrician put some patches on Zhao Min's stomach, opened the instrument, and under the weak current stimulation, Zhao Min felt numb.
After the experience, Zhao Min inquired on the Internet and learned that the uterus needs about 6 weeks of self-healing process, and the vast majority of people's pelvic, rectus abdominis, and pelvic floor muscles can be restored through independent exercise, and the need to recover needs to be handled by professional doctors.
Zhao Min made up her mind not to spend the money, but the maternity doctor repeatedly urged her to buy a package. Zhao Min was angry and told the person in charge of the Confinement Center: "Don't let the maternity doctor come to my room again." Zhao Min's package also included pelvic floor muscle repair, rectus abdominis repair, postpartum sweating and other projects, which she simply did not do.
48 days after giving birth, Zhao Min returned to the hospital to do a systematic postpartum review, B ultrasound everything is normal, the uterus has fully recovered to the size before pregnancy, and the rectus abdominis and pelvic floor muscles are recovering well. The doctor said she didn't need to do a postpartum rehabilitation program, just go home and exercise on her own.
"The service attitude of your confinement center must be good, but the service is not professional, and I don't think it has much to do with the price." Xia Shasha believes that the one-to-one model of mother and baby and the self-owned kitchen are the two most important factors in choosing a confinement center, and the management level of nursing also needs to be paid attention to, such as whether the nurse has a nurse certificate, whether the confinement sister-in-law has a mother and baby teacher certificate, how the level of the head nurse is, and whether the nursing management process is standard.
The unit price of customers soared, and the confinement center is still a loss-making business?
With the introduction of the two-child and three-child policies, in recent years, confinement centers have sprung up like mushrooms, gradually moving from high-end families to ordinary people.
According to Ai Media Consulting data, the market size of China's confinement center has increased from 1.78 billion yuan in 2013 to 16.76 billion yuan in 2020, with an average annual compound growth rate of about 47%, and it is expected to reach 24.3 billion yuan in 2023.
Image source: Ai Media Consulting
However, at the 2020 China Maternal and Infant Frontier Conference, Tu Junyin, founder of Yiyuezi Center, mentioned that 95% of Yuezi Center stores are struggling with losses. Of the five confinement centers that have been or have been listed, only 1 can maintain a small profit.
"It's very difficult for the confinement center to make a profit, and the cycle is particularly long." Shasha said.
According to the business form, the confinement center includes hospital affiliates, hotel-style, single-family villa-style, apartment-style and so on. But either category faces high fixed costs.
Xia Shasha introduced that the asset model of the single-family operation of the confinement center is heavier, the return cycle is longer, counting the cost of land acquisition and decoration in the early stage, the hardware investment of the new store is at least 20 million yuan, plus other cost inputs, "there is no two years that can not return the cost."
For hotel-style confinement centers, the standard is relatively higher. According to reports, the monthly center that charges 100,000 yuan to 150,000 yuan is 800 to 1,000 yuan per day.
Huge upfront investment, corresponding to the low repurchase rate of the consumption attribute, the confinement center can only increase the promotion efforts. "Now many crescent centers will focus on marketing and packaging. Like how high-end the room environment is, maternal and infant products are brand-name, and the less important things are packaged gorgeously. Shasha said.
In addition, due to the special customer group of the confinement center, the fault tolerance rate is low. "If there is a customer lawsuit, this order may have to lose money." Therefore, Xia Shasha sighed that the confinement industry is an industry that needs word of mouth very much, and for each confinement center, three years is a hurdle.
In addition, unprofessional nursing, various accidents and chaos that frequently appear in the news have repeatedly plunged the confinement center into a crisis of trust.
In 2020, during the process of feeding the baby, the sister-in-law of the January Club in Jilin City suddenly choked on milk and stopped breathing, and went to many hospitals to rescue her. In 2021, a baby girl suffered from bloating and shortness of breath at the Foshan Confinement Center in Guangdong Province, which delayed the best treatment due to the lack of relevant professional ability of the confinement center staff. In the same year, 14 newborns in a confinement center in Shenyang were diagnosed with pneumonia.
In September 2018, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of the People's Republic of China and the Standardization Administration of the People's Republic of China jointly issued the "General Requirements for Maternal and Infant Health Care Service Places". The requirements put forward general norms in terms of operation and management, practitioners, service content, professional technology, disputes and complaints.
However, this standard is a "national recommended standard" and is not mandatory. Regarding the supervision of the confinement center, it is still in the "self-discipline" stage.
Obstetricians and gynecologists and popular science bloggers on the sixth floor have bluntly said in popular science articles that the confinement center is a "pseudo demand", and most of the services and consumption derived from the traditional concept of "confinement" are untenable.
The question that really should be pondered, he argues, is: What prevents us from raising children independently? What makes us choose to have children when we can't raise them independently?
In 2020, Wang Wang did not choose the confinement center when giving birth to his second child, and after careful selection, chose a living confinement sister-in-law. Although she did not plan to have three children, Wang Wang felt that if she came again, she now had the ability to take care of herself and the baby without the help of external forces.
(All respondents are pseudonyms)
(Editor: Xun Shilin Proofreader: Yan Jingning)