Zhu Zhongbi has been a mother for a week but is still waiting for her husband to name their daughter.

"I have not seen him since the afternoon of May 18 when I went into labor in our village, Jianjiang, in Beichuan.

"As local hospitals were destroyed in the earthquake, a military helicopter brought me here that afternoon," the ethnic Tibetan told China Daily yesterday in the maternity ward of the Chengdu Military Region Hospital in the northern suburbs of Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan.

As the helicopter had to carry other patients, there was no seat for her husband Liu Zhongliang, a 26-year-old farmer of Qiang ethnicity in Beichuan, which is the country's only Qiang autonomous county.

Before the helicopter took off, Liu promised to meet his wife in Chengdu and name their baby himself.

The next day, Zhu gave birth to a healthy child weighing 3.9 kg but was feeling weak.

"It is the nurses who have taken care of me. When I arrived, I had nothing but the clothes on my body. They bought milk, napkins and clothes for my daughter," she said.

And to bring her back to health, nurses in the nutrition department have been making fish and chicken soup for her every day.

As Zhu was not lactating on first two days after giving birth, Ou Xiaoli, a young mother from Dujiangyan, a city under Chengdu's administration, offered to breastfeed her daughter.

"Although we did not know each other, Ou, who is also a farmer, was so kind and breastfed my daughter for three days."

Zhu is happy to stay in the hospital because her house back home has collapsed.

She lost contact with her husband for four days because communication to Beichuan was cut off.

"I was quite worried and prayed he keeps his promise to name our daughter in Chengdu."

Zhu and her husband fell in love at first sight earlier last year when they attended a friend's wedding in another village in Beichuan.

"Less than two months after we met, we got married. He is very handsome," she said with a smile.

Zhu was relieved when Liu called her last Thursday.

"He has been doing volunteer work in Beichuan and Mianyang, helping soldiers evacuate the wounded and taking care of patients in hospitals. He will arrive in Chengdu tomorrow and meet us," she said.

According to head nurse Zheng Lihong, four pregnant women from the quake-hit Wenchuan and Beichuan counties and Shifang City in Sichuan have given birth in the maternity wards since the May 12 earthquake.

"The hospital has paid all their medical costs and meals," she said.

(China Daily May 27, 2008)