This page outlines the care you will be provided with once your care has been transferred from the postnatal ward, over to your community midwifery team. This also covers if you have had your baby at home.
You will be visited by your community midwife at home, she will perform a postnatal health check on you and baby and also give feeding support, filling in a documented feeding assessment with you.
A midwife or maternity support worker will call you to support with feeding your baby and to ask about jaundice. This is tailored to your individual needs; if any issues are highlighted, you will receive a face-to-face visit to receive feeding support and/or a simple non-invasive test to check baby for jaundice (see the Jaundice section below for more Information).
A midwife or maternity support worker will either visit you at home or invite you to a clinic for this appointment. Another set of postnatal checks will be performed on you and your baby, your baby will be weighed and you will be offered the new born blood spot screening for baby.
A midwife will visit you at home, where she will provide postnatal checks and re-weigh your baby. By this appointment, your baby should be back to their birth weight. If not, you will be provided with extra, appropriate care from your midwife, health visitor, specialist feeding services or paediatrician.
Your newborn baby should be checked for signs of jaundice at every opportunity, especially in the first 5 days.
If your baby appears yellow, is sleepy, not feeding well or unresponsive, please contact your Midwife or Health Visitor as soon as possible. Make sure you look at your baby in natural light.
If it looks like your baby has visible jaundice, this will be checked in the first instance using a transcutaneous bilirubinometer (TcB) a hand held machine placed against your baby’s skin; it is non-invasive and causes no pain or discomfort to your baby. If this reading is raised your baby will need to have a simple blood test carried out in hospital to check the bilirubin levels. The Doctor or Midwife will use the results to decide whether the jaundice needs to be treated and what kind of treatment would be best.
For further information, please see the NHS Choices website:
New-born jaundice
When your baby is born the hospital send a birth notification to your Health Visitor. Your Health Visitor may visit you at home prior to the birth of your baby. However, it is usually 2 weeks after the birth of your baby when the Midwife has discharged you from their care.
At this first contact the Health Visitor will assess the health needs of you and your baby and offer advice regarding health and wellbeing and the baby clinics.
In addition, they may also weigh and examine your baby.
This information will be recorded in your Child’s Record Book (The Red Book).
If they have not contacted you by Day 14, please contact your GP.