Featuring amenities like those found in five-star hotels, luxury maternity care centers are gaining favor in big Chinese cities.

Catering to well-heeled families able to afford the high prices, they support the Chinese practice of confinement periods for new mothers. And they are expected to see further growth in 2012, many women racing to give birth in the auspicious Year of the Dragon in the belief that a lifetime of good fortune will be conveyed on their child.

Statistics from Chinese health care associations shows there are around 200 maternity care centers in the country, at least 30 of them in Shanghai.

Between five and ten percent of new mothers in Shanghai's downtown areas would choose to enter a maternity care center, according to a survey by the association of domestic services of Shanghai.

Xu Wen was one such Shanghainese willing to pay up. After giving birth to her baby, the white-collar worker moved to the city's Youaibei maternity care center, where she was charged 59,800 yuan (about 9,496 U.S. dollars), about a quarter of her family's annual income, for a one-month stay.

The Youaibei center, located in a high-end hotel in Pudong district, has more than 60 suites, providing service packages priced from tens of thousands to more than one million yuan. The most expensive is a 406-sq-meter two-story suite for which there is a charge of 1.18 million yuan for a 28-day stay.

The center offers baby care services including feeding, cleaning and massage, and mothers are provided with round-the-clock medical care, specially prepared meals, body recovery exercises and a set of leisure facilities such as swimming, gym and tennis.

"It's quite worthwhile, for childbirth is a once-in-a-life-time experience for me. It's just like an investment in health," Xu says, adding that the center is staffed with professional maternity coaches who can take very good care of her and the baby.

GROWING NEED

The Chinese term "Zuo Yue Zi," literally translated as "sitting a month," refers to the tradition for mothers to stay indoors, undergoing a restrictive diet and a set of activities for four weeks to recover from childbirth.

Chinese believe that women with an improper or insufficient confinement period will be susceptible to many diseases in the rest of their life.

Historically, elder family members, especially mother-in-laws were expected to oversee the confinement period, while today the task is mostly left on the shoulders of nurses and the mothers themselves.

Xie Xialing, a sociologist at Fudan University in Shanghai, says the fact that many young urban couples are delaying marriage and childbearing means it is becoming impractical for new mothers to rely on their ageing parents.

Xie adds that, with rising levels of affluence and awareness of the importance of fitness and lifestyle, there are increasing numbers of women willing to invest in maternity care services.

BUSINESSES CAPITALIZE, BUT REGULATIONS LACKING

This year's predictable baby boom will bring an expanded profit for maternity care centers, Shen Guozhen, vice president of Youaibei says. About 30 suites in the center have already been booked.

Chen Chao, president of the Xinyuehui maternity care center in Shanghai, says, in order to meet the soaring market need, his company plans to open subsidiaries soon in Beijing and Shenzhen, the southern economic powerhouse.

However, many are warning that, as a newly emerging industry, maternity care centers are plagued with a lack of regulations.

In June 2011, a dozen mothers and children in a center in Shanghai were infected with eye diseases as a result of a lack of sanitation control.

Gu Xiaoming, a Shanghai resident, says he gave up the idea of sending his granddaughter to a maternity care center after discovering the facilities and staff there were not up to professional standards.

"The receptionists are either retired nurses without a higher education degree or young white-collar workers who have no experience of confinement at all," he notes.

Wen Jun, a professor at East China Normal University in Shanghai, attributes the problems to the sector's low market-entry thresholds as well as the absence of regulations once centers are established.

The establishment of uniform service standards and strengthened supervision are of primary importance for the future, Wen believes.

Meanwhile, some observers including Xie Xialing points out that enjoyment of luxury maternity care services as a kind of lifestyle should be kept within certain limits, and competition mentality in consumption should be avoided.