During the first days after the birth, your doctor will take care of your post-partum health status to make sure your body is healing the way it should. So take the advantage of these few days to start familiarizing with your baby and have some rest.
New born first exams
Soon after birth, when you will be looking at your baby sleeping peacefully in his baby cot your clear first question will be: “How is my baby?”. This legitimate concern is immediately reassured by doctors and midwives who examine the baby from head to toe to check his vital functions and exclude possible complications.
Let’s see in details what do the routine examinations of our newborn baby involve.
- Apgar score: a simple method to quickly and summarily assess the health of newborn children immediately after childbirth. The test is generally done at one and five minutes after birth and according to the result, newborn vitality will be considered to be normal or low. The ideal score is 10/10 that corresponds to pulse rate >100, a loud crying, good reflexes and pink skin. If the score is between 3 and 7 it means that the neonate requires medical attention and may risk to suffer from long-term damages- A full check up of his general look and his organs functionality
- Neurological examination: it is carried out to check muscle tone (hypertonia) and response to stimulation
- Sight and hearing control
- A small blood sample is taken from newborn heel: blood drops are absorbed on a filter paper that is sent to the laboratory to be analysed. This blood sample is essential to make sure the baby at the moment of birth does not suffer from any inborn diseases like hypothyroidism, phenylketonuria, cystic fibrosis on which it is possible to intervene if recognised promptly
- In case your doctor is still doubtful about your baby’s overall health conditions, a closest examination during your stay in the maternity ward will be carried out.
Mother’s checklist
After the birth of a baby, the body has to heal from childbirth, rebuild its strength, and get back the shape that it had before pregnancy. Your stay in the maternity ward will be about 5 days long and it will help you to have some rest and recover.
Your health status will be constantly monitored day after day.
- First of all, doctors will assess your general health status, possible blood losses (lochia) and intestine function
- Secondly, doctors will check breast, nipples (that will have to be strong enough to stand breastfeeding and possibly breast pumps) and uterus conditions as well as suture and body temperature, pulse rate and blood pressure
- In case of excessive blood loss after childbirth, it will be checked haemoglobin concentration in red cells
- Lastly, the doctor will make sure symptoms like fever, urinary problems, dizziness, breathlessness, breast pain or excessive anxiety do not arise during these days
After all this, finally you can hold your baby and wait for your relatives and friends to visit you. Even though their visit will make you happy, take the opportunity of your stay in the hospital to have also a rest and spend some time alone with your baby so that you can bond better with each other.
Remember that in less than no time you will be back at home again and shortly you will take him out for a walk with your new pushchair!
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