Two hour post-natal appointment

So today was my first postnatal appointment with a woman who had a few babies, and was the closest appointment of all!

I welcomed the short drive (well, comparatively short) with a woman and her baby who were a few weeks postnatal. The woman had a complex history which she was open in explaining to me, and the appointment was mostly for feeding support.

Entirely apt

In my training, the practice I've generally seen is a visit the day after leaving hospital (very, very few home births and no MLU) then another visit day 5/6 for the newborn blood spot test and weighing the baby, and generally if no concerns a phone call on day 10 to discharge to the health visitor. So to see a baby and woman a few weeks postpartum was a new world! I felt strangely out of my depth considering university do teach us about postnatal care till week 6, but the reality is I've never put this into practice. For this reason, I think I held back quite a lot. The placement is observational anyway, but I was a lot quieter as most of my feeding knowledge that is ingrained into me is most relevent to early feeding issues such as a 'sleepy' baby, concerns about supply, positioning and attachment, formula volumes etc etc. 

Postnatal care is regarded as the cinderella of maternity services by women and staff alike, its often the most underfunded and understaffed area of care so its utterly refreshing to see such fantastic, holistic postnatal care. Yorkshire Storks offer complete midwifery postnatal care until week 6 with every woman, with visits a minimum of weekly and at most twice daily, with that changing appointment to appointment depending on not just the clinical picture, but at the womans request too. 

As with every other engagement with the Storks, the appointment was unhurried with the woman and her family speaking freely and frankly and a natural end to the conversation and  on the womans terms.

Sadly, thats almost the end of my week with them! I'm going to the Harrogate home birth support group on Sunday with Chris and back with them week commencing 30th April.

Next week I start at delivery suite!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Delivery Suite, and a tour of A+E

Image
So this week I have been in delivery suite, although I only managed a shift and a half!  My mentor was a lovely midwife of 15 years who'd worked up and down England before settling back home. Our first shift we were at 'the back', where inductions of labour are started, compromised of small bays with usually 8 women a day coming, it was 'Q' and we had 3. The women were being induced for various reasons, one was a previous caesarian. Usually prostin is used here generally up to 3 times, only once if the woman is planning a VBAC.  One really interesting thing is, they occasionally use osmotic dilators for their cervical priming. I'd never actually heard of this, the midwives refer to them as 'seaweed sticks', and the idea is a few of the sticks are inserted (depending on parity, comfort levels etc) into the cervix and the vaginal/cervical mucus and moisture is absorbed into the sticks which dilates them sort of like a sponge does. There is reportedly
Read more

#IDM2018 at #UWShealth

What a day!  A long drive to up to Scotland last night, and a 0600 start for our IDM celebration in Paisley, then a longer drive back to Newcastle💤 I first registered and set up my stall (yes, my stall!) that one of the lecturers asked me to do, doing tinsel hair and french/dutch plaits for donations to the UWS scholarship. It was slow at first but it didn't have pick up! The morning was compromised of speakers, mostly centred around the best start 5 year plan , beginning with Dorothy Finlay the lead midwife from GG&C about being an early adopter. Dorothy had a lot to say and seemed really invested in making case loading a working model and the pilot teams have already been discussed. She talked about how this will affect women from NHS Highlands as they frequently come to GG&C for consultant care and elective caesarians. In a really forward thinking move, the adjustment to case loading will be phased in firstly through the women opting for an elective caesaria
Read more

Birth Centres are cool

Image
So i've officially finished my shifts at the birth centre 😔 i'm gutted! I've had such a fantastic experience and learnt so much, the incredible midwives have taught me so much, i'm in awe of the women and saw true calm, physiological, undisturbed births. The birth centre is entirely different to anything i've ever experienced, and it's not till you go, you realise how birth CAN be. The births I had the privilege of being part of were some of the calmest i'd ever seen, no mad rush, no big trolleys with sterile delivery packs, and genuinely undisturbed first golden hours. No pressure for vitamin K or a weight and most stay over night in the birth centre, with partners! Around half of the rooms have pools in, and generally families are moved into the room directly opposite postnatally if they opted for a pool room for labour/birth. NONE, I repeat, NONE have beds! They have sofas with pull out beds for postnatal stays, but no 'labour' beds at all in
Read more