Your baby
Checks that tell you what is normal
Weight, growth, wellbeing and behaviour, checked at home and written into your blue book, with the explanation that makes the numbers mean something.
The blue book
Your baby's personal health record
Every family in New South Wales is given a personal health record, the blue book, when a baby is born. It travels with your child for years and every professional who sees them writes in it.
An EverNurture midwife records her checks in yours at each visit, so the entries sit alongside the hospital's and your child and family health nurse's rather than in a separate file somewhere. When you next see anyone else, the history is already in your hands.
Bring the book out before she arrives if you can find it. In the first fortnight, nobody can.
What she looks at
More than a set of numbers
A check is quick. The value is in what your midwife makes of it, and what she can rule out for you.
Measured
- Weight, and the pattern of it across visits rather than a single reading
- Growth, recorded in your blue book
- General wellbeing and how your baby presents on the day
Observed and explained
- Newborn behaviour, and how to read your baby's cues
- Whether what you are seeing is ordinary newborn behaviour or worth watching
About the weight
One number rarely means much
Weight is the measure families fixate on, and the one most often misread. Babies lose weight in the first days and regain it. A single figure, on its own, is close to meaningless.
What your midwife is watching is the direction of travel, set against how your baby is feeding, how alert they are and how they are behaving. That context is the reason a check at home beats stepping on a set of scales in a chemist and worrying at the result.
If something needs more
She will say so, and help
If a check raises something, your midwife tells you plainly and arranges what comes next rather than leaving you to work it out. That might be your GP, a child and family health nurse, a lactation consultant or a paediatrician.
The wider schedule
These checks are one part of a longer run
Your blue book sets out the recommended schedule of health and developmental checks from birth right through to starting school. The early ones fall exactly where a midwife is visiting, which is why her entries belong in the same book.
After that, the schedule continues with your child and family health nurse and your GP. A midwife's visits are the start of it rather than a separate thread.
What she is not replacing
Your other care carries on
Postnatal midwife visits sit alongside your child and family health nurse, your GP and any follow-up from the hospital. Nothing about booking a midwife means cancelling those.
What it changes is the first weeks, when appointments are hardest to get to and the questions are at their thickest.
Worth asking
Three questions that get you more from a check
A check tells you a number. These turn it into something you can use.
- Is this where you would expect a baby of this age to be? Context beats a raw figure every time.
- What would you want to see by the next visit? Gives you something concrete to watch for instead of vague worry.
- What would make you want to see us sooner? The clearest possible answer to the question families agonise over at 2am.
Write the answers in the blue book while she is there. By the evening you will remember the numbers and not the explanation.
Book a check
Want your baby weighed and looked over at home?
Baby checks are part of every postnatal visit. Contact the midwife who suits your family and she will arrange a time.