
Day five visit/appointment
A midwife will usually visit you again five days after you give birth. If day five falls on a weekend or bank holiday, a hospital appointment will be offered instead of a home visit. This will be a booked appointment with a set time, held in the antenatal clinic area of Maternity.
In addition to routine checks, babies are also weighed and screened for nine rare but serious health conditions. The screening is performed using a small blood sample which is obtained from the baby’s heel, also referred to as the ‘heel prick test’. Please refer to your Screening tests for you and your baby leaflet for more information.
Further postnatal community midwife appointments will be arranged depending on your needs. This generally occurs between day 10 and day 14. It is quite common after this point for your care to be handed over to the health visiting team and your GP, which means you and your baby will be discharged from community midwifery services. However, you can still contact the community midwifery team for support or advice for up to 28 days after you give birth.
For further information about postnatal care and how to care for your baby please see the following link Early days – NHS (www.nhs.uk)