For information about you, your new baby and your postnatal care please access our postnatal padlet:
bit.ly/dudleypn
Your electronic patient record will continue following the birth of your baby. You will also be given a red child health record (Red Book). These need to be available to the midwife for any postnatal checks that you may have. When seeing a community midwife, it is essential she has the opportunity to see both mother and baby, so please make you are both available.
Whilst we make every effort to maintain continuity, appointments may not always be with your named midwife. A midwife from a small team local to you will visit and we hope you and your baby will have the opportunity to see your named midwife again during your postnatal care.
If you have had a homebirth, the midwife who attended to support you will arrange a follow up visit.
Home visits are scheduled to take place by a community midwife anytime between 9am and 5pm. Please keep these days free and make sure you and your baby are available as we are unable to give specific times.
Some post-natal appointments will be held at post-natal clinics in the hospital
Day five visit/appointment
A midwife will usually visit you again five days after you give birth. If day five falls on a weekend or bank holiday, a hospital appointment will be offered instead of a home visit. This will be a booked appointment with a set time, held in the antenatal clinic area of Maternity.
In addition to routine checks, babies are also weighed and screened for nine rare but serious health conditions. The screening is performed using a small blood sample which is obtained from the baby’s heel, also referred to as the ‘heel prick test’. Please refer to your Screening tests for you and your baby leaflet for more information.
Further postnatal community midwife appointments will be arranged depending on your needs. This generally occurs between day 10 and day 14. It is quite common after this point for your care to be handed over to the health visiting team and your GP, which means you and your baby will be discharged from community midwifery services. However, you can still contact the community midwifery team for support or advice for up to 28 days after you give birth.
For further information about postnatal care and how to care for your baby please see the following link Early days – NHS (www.nhs.uk)
