Infant care course, part 3

[pne]

This evening we started off with the checkups: the first one, U1, is done in the delivery room, along with APGAR tests at 1, 5, and 10 minutes.

The second one, U2, is done between 3 and 10 days, so if you stay in the hospital for the full three days, you'll often be able to have U2 done in the hospital—unless you're born on a Wednesday morning: they don't have a pædiatrician of their own, but get daily visits from the Mariahilf hospital but only on weekdays. So if a child is born on Wednesday or Thursday, it won't be old enough for U2 by Friday but you'll usually be discharged by the weekend. Then you'll have to arrange for the U2 to be done at a pædiatrician's.

U3 is done between 4 and 6 weeks, and includes more of the same: blood tests, seeing whether the child is growing and gaining weight, testing reflexes, etc.

We also talked about newborn's jaundice, which may require you to stay at the hospital depending on the bilirubin levels and how well it responds to phototherapy. Apparently, babies who have a different blood group from their mother (if the mother has type-0 blood) or who have a different Rhesus factor are more at risk from this, and the bilirubin level which indicates phototherapy is lower for them. Though that shouldn't be a problem for us, fortunately; as far as I know, we're both 0+.

At the end, we all went to have another look at the newborns' station, and saw the phototherapy lamp in operation (which is pretty glaring, so the children get a kind of cloth spectacles to protect their eyes), then we went another floor down to look at the delivery rooms and the bathtub, which Stella and I had already seen twice :)

Then off back home. I hope everything goes well when it's our turn.

Comments

[subbes]

Are you aiming to deliver in the tub, or will it be general stress and cramp release for during labour?

Heh, you can tell I see you two as a parenting unit/equal pair, because that above sentence suggests that you'll be the one delivering! Oh, linguistics and such.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Stella said she'd like to deliver in the tub.

But we'll see how it goes; some women find they don't like it after all, and others find that their contractions subside in the warm water and don't help the baby out, so they have to get out of the tub to get them going again and may be better off just for general relief than for the actual giving birth.

Hello!

[fridoline.livejournal.com]

In our case it's the other way round!

Mum is not so interested in the tub, but F. thinks it's a great idea.

Hope everything goes well, which ever way it turns out to be.

Re: Hello!

[pne.livejournal.com]

Hello Fridoline!

Thank you, and I hope everything goes well with Mum and F. as well.

Stella said she'd like the tub but she won't be disappointed if it doesn't work out. So let's see.