Licensed midwife Aleksandra Evanguelidi (www.SacredEntrance.com) shares what the role of a midwife is after the birth, including regular check ups on the newborn and mother. No. 5 of 7 interviews.
After the birth, we make sure that mom and baby are transitioning well into the postpartum, after-birth period. We generally stay with moms and families for about six hours postpartum, making sure the bleeding is minimized, and that baby is breastfeeding, and that mom has an understanding of how breastfeeding goes. We then attend mothers postpartum about one day, and make sure that baby and mom are still doing well. We are on call for our clients twenty-four hours a day for the first six weeks following pregnancy and birth. We visit them again at one week at their home, and at week three they come in to see us, and again after six weeks postpartum, in which we do a full postpartum checkup on them—we do a pap smear, we make sure that they’re healing (if we needed to stitch them that their healing is going well), and we have a whole conversation on postpartum nutrition for the long term to really make sure that they’re getting their needs met so that she can successfully meet the needs of their baby and their new family. We make sure that they have a clear understanding that at some point they’re going to need to incorporate birth control, birth option choices into their regimen, and we give them the latest information that’s available at that time.
