According to forecasts by the Shanghai population and family planning committee, the city will see over 137,000 babies born in 2007, almost double the number in 2006. Beijing has also announced it expects 150,000 babies to be born in 2007, compared with 129,000 last year.

The boom has begun to put strains on hospitals in major cities.

The Shanghai Punan Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital are packed with women coming for health checks in preparation of pregnancy. Other visitors are already in the final stages of pregnancy, waiting in long queues for routine prenatal tests.

The Haidian Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital in the capital Beijing has received an average of 3,000 patients in January, far exceeding the hospital's capacity.

Maternity doctors in the cities of Harbin, Taiyuan, Fuzhou and Haikou have been working double shifts and struggling to find enough beds on the wards. In some hospitals, the obstetrics departments are fully booked until April.

"Yue Sao" or maternity maids, are benefiting from the boom. Soon-to-be dads and moms in Beijing have to make reservations six months before their children are due, and monthly salaries of popular maids in Shanghai have tripled to reach 6,000 yuan (about 774 U.S. dollars).

"The birth rush will create similar shortages down the line when the babies grow up, go to school and look for jobs," said Yu Hai, a sociology professor in the Shanghai-based Fudan University.

Parents who chose to have babies in the millennium have found the simple task of getting their kids into kindergarten a frustrating ordeal, because there were not enough openings," said Yu.

In 2000, also the Year of Dragon, more than 36 million babies were born in China, nearly double the number in 1999 and 2001.

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