It is not an easy job to be a pregnant mom in large cities. I believe all new moms in Shanghai, myself included, see the nine months of pregnancy as an odyssey.

On buses or in subway trains people rarely offer you their seats, pollution and radiation are everywhere, and super-expensive nannies booked in advance may scrap the contract in the last minute.

But the bitterest experience is probably the routine hospital antenatal screenings, which include a cluster of problems with Chinese characteristics.

After discovering I was two months pregnant, I rushed to confirm the results at the maternal and child care service center in the district where my hukou (household registration) is located. The doctor, without bothering giving me a look, filled a form and urged me to do an ultrasonic scan first. I'd heard before that early scanning might harm the baby and thus requested if I could just confirm through a urine analysis.

Seeing the doctor's cold face freeze, I had no choice but to go through the scanning. The doctor complained behind me: "You're already pregnant. We wouldn't even accept your registration if your hukou wasn't in Shanghai!"

In the end I was successfully registered and could drop by for routine antenatal screenings. This hospital is a relatively good one in Shanghai, and is crowded by queues of pregnant women every day. A colleague recommended I apply for a VIP card, which would save a lot of trouble until the day I gave birth.

The VIP card, with an entrance fee of 2,000 yuan ($313), would escort me to senior doctors each time I visited, and I could enjoy priority to choose a top room to give birth. However, I would need to pay 200 yuan, 20 times the norm, to make an appointment every time. Prices for all kinds of tests would also hike, and it would ultimately cost more than 10,000 yuan.

I told myself that since the family planning policy meant I was only going to do this once, or perhaps twice, I could treat myself better. Thus I decided to become a VIP.

The nurse at the VIP window had a warmer attitude, but was still too busy to give me a look. She handed me a registration book, where dozens of expectant women were already on the waiting list. According to the nurse, most of them already registered when they were barely pregnant, and I, a pregnant woman who didn't realize the reality until two months later, could do nothing but wait for a slot.

Of course, the slot never came. I thus began to comfort myself: Those special quotas should be saved for older pregnant moms bearing much higher risks. For healthy, young Shanghainese, queuing is probably the least dreadful thing. We are too used to it. During the Shanghai World Expo in 2010, I bought a small foldable stool and spent 10 hours in a queue. This stool could be very useful during my pregnancy too, I told myself.

The hospital wasn't that inhuman. Seats at the waiting zone were saved only for pregnant women, and I never needed to use that little stool. But at the same time, I also missed an episode that I had imagined a thousand times.

In US soap operas, we often see young couples burst into tears when holding each other's hands and hearing the baby's heartbeat together. That romantic moment never came for me, or any other pregnant woman at this hospital. In order to save the seats for only pregnant women, all husbands were banned from entrance and could only stand outside.

Going for a routine screening was always like fighting a battle. Appointments were open after 7 am. But a long queue was already there if you arrived on the dot of seven.

Gradually my husband and I devised a perfect division of labor. I went through all kinds of testing procedures while he rushed through different floors to submit money and fetch test sheets. It took only two minutes to meet the doctor, but the whole process lasted two hours.

The ultimate, sacred moment finally came.

By then I was at the end of my tolerance for the hospital. While suffering from great pain on the obstetric table, a male nurse came and said I needed to do a full body test. He asked me to move to a stretcher, which was about seven or eight centimeters higher than the table.

But this wasn't the end of the torture. When I gave birth, I heard in a daze another woman's cries drifting in the corridor, echoing various groans in surrounding rooms. That was definitely hell.

I myself was born during China's baby boom in the 1980s, and now the next generation has to face similar problems.

When there are so many people, a fierce rivalry for resources is inevitable.

As local resources could no longer satisfy people's needs, more pregnant women now head toward Hong Kong or abroad to enjoy better services beside hefty benefits.

 Many appeal for better quality of doctors and vigorous input by the government. But I don't see the situation can be fundamentally changed as long as there are so many people around.

The author is a freelance writer based in Shanghai. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn

Voxpop

Miss Gu, a pregnant Chinese woman living in Sweden

I have been pregnant for five months. Usually I go to the hospital at the appointed time, and there are no more than three women waiting before me. The doctors and nurses there show attentiveness and respect toward pregnant women.

My midwife assistant is very patient, and responds to every inquiry I make. Once I lost the appointment letter with the hospital for ultrasound examination. She helped me rearrange with the hospital soon.

I heard my relatives in China complain about doing checkups in domestic hospitals, including queuing for a long time and the bad attitudes of doctors. This is partly due to China's large population. Nonetheless, the welfare I receive is partially thanks to the high tax in Sweden.

Cheng Liang, a 27-year-old resident in Hebei Province

In China, many people have to give doctors hongbao (red envelopes of cash) so as to book a bed in the hospital, due to the large number of patients.

I have acquaintances in the hospital where my pregnant wife went, so we didn't have to register or wait. We even didn't pay.

On the one hand, I feel that knowing someone in the hospital really helped. But on the other hand, I know that some deeply rooted problems in China's medical services cannot be solved any time soon.

@jingfaxinyuan from Sina Weibo

Every time I accompanied my pregnant wife to go for a checkup, I can deeply feel that there're not only the problem of conflicts between doctors and patients, but also a shortage of affiliated medical facilities.

I don't know how many people one hospital sees a day in China, but I know if you go to the hospital later than 10 am, you probably cannot be attended by a doctor that day.

@emma-mom from Sina Weibo

When doing a full body checkup or gynecological exam in the US, the pregnant woman stays at in a private room and changes her clothes before the doctor comes.

However in China, she has to take off her underwear in front of the doctors, and the whole checking process is numb and formulaic.

Some thus complain that only in the foreign countries can one feels dignity. I hope China can catch up in this regard.