Postnatal care

Postnatal is the period immediately after the birth of your baby.

After the birth of your baby, you will receive immediate postnatal care on the labour ward. The care for you and your baby will then be transferred to one of our postnatal wards where midwives, maternity support workers and nursery nurses will support you to care for your baby. In some cases, a doctor may also be involved in the care for you and your baby.

Our postnatal services include:

• Helping people who have had a caesarean section recover from their operation including help with moving around.
• Care and support from experienced midwives and neonatologists (doctors who specialise in new born babies), for mothers with new born babies who may need antibiotics, treatment for jaundice, or breastfeeding support, including breastfeeding information sessions by our infant feeding specialist team.
• Specialist women's health physiotherapy.
• Regular reviews by our obstetric doctors for women and birthing people needing specialist care after the birth of their baby.
• Anaesthetic follow-up care for woman and birthing people who had epidural in labour. BCG (Bacillus Calmette-Guérin) vaccination to protect your baby from tuberculosis.
• New born baby and infant physical examinations by specialist midwives.

Guidelines for visiting and infection prevention and control.

Read our most up to date visiting guidelines on the maternity patient information page.