Postpartum Care
Our postpartum care starts right after you give birth. After your baby is born, they are placed directly on your chest to initiate skin-to-skin contact. During this time, you will be given as much privacy as you need to touch, cuddle, admire, and inspect your newborn infant. This time is crucial to initiating bonding between the mother and the baby and also helps regulate the baby’s vitals.
After Delivery
Once you’ve had some time to rest and recover from labor, you will be assisted with breastfeeding, ideally within an hour of giving birth. You might also be given important postpartum instructions, such as when to call for help and how to go about certain things, like going to the bathroom.
We then conduct certain basic newborn examinations, such as an inspection of their body, taking their temperature, and listening to their heart and chest. We also take their footprints for our records. All this is done in your presence, by your bedside.
Most of our clients return home within 6–8 hours of delivery.
The lactation consultant or a midwife will see you and the baby for an in-office exam at least once within the first three days.
Postpartum Visits
Within 24-36 hours of discharge, a midwife will call you with a checklist of questions to ensure you and your baby are doing well.
24 to 48 hours after birth, you have your first in-person visit at the birth center. It is about 90 minutes long and allows us to check in with mom and baby to ensure they’re healthy. We will address any concerns and answer any questions that you might have.
We talk about breastfeeding, check your latch, and see if your baby is feeding adequately. We also talk about the mother’s health and address topics such as postpartum depression. During this time, we also talk about what your routine looks like at home and if you’re facing any kind of trouble that we can help with.
During this visit, we perform all the necessary screenings for the baby, including heart disease screening and metabolic screening.
If needed, we can schedule an additional visit 2-3 days after the first visit.
Then, we will see you again in two weeks and six weeks for hour-long visits.
At the 2-week visit, we:
- Check the baby’s weight
- Conduct another metabolic screening
- Check on how things are going at home
- Check on mom’s pain level and recovery
- Help with any questions
At six weeks, we talk about:
- How things are going overall
- Contraception
- What to expect in the healing process
- Resuming activities, setting a timeline, etc.
We also recommend pelvic floor therapy as a part of the postpartum recovery process.
You can stay in touch with us after your birth with a wide range of classes, including our low-cost baby massage (Baby Love) and postnatal yoga classes. If parents have any questions or concerns, they can always give us a call or schedule additional visits as needed.