Are you wondering what your hospital stay after baby will be like? Well you have come to the right place so keep reading!
It’s only normal to spend a good portion of your pregnancy preparing for the birth of your baby – it’s a big deal! But it’s also important to educate yourself about what to expect after giving birth.
This post will break down what to expect after giving birth including bonding after birth, how you can expect to feel physically, which tests your baby will have, how to handle visitors, items you can take home from the hospital, the minimum hospital stay and so much more.
Your postpartum recovery will start in the hospital so it’s a good idea to have some basic knowledge of what to expect so you can get the most out of the experience.
This post is all about your hospital stay after baby.
Hospital Stay After Baby
Bonding After Delivery
Following a vaginal delivery, you will be able to enjoy some skin to skin time with your baby, assuming there are no complications or concerns. The pediatrician will then take the baby to a designated spot in the delivery room to examine the baby, take measurements and weight, and do any necessary tests.
Bonding after delivery can be a little bit different after a c section. Some moms may be able to have a few minutes of skin to skin after the baby is born but oftentimes the baby is examined by the pediatrician first in the operating room. Once the baby is cleaned up and wrapped in a blanket, he or she is brought over to the mom but skin to skin doesn’t happen until you are in the recovery room.
In my experience with two c sections, I didn’t feel comfortable holding my babies while I was on the operating table. Instead, my husband held our babies close to me and we enjoyed hours of bonding time in the recovery room a little while later.
There are so many benefits of skin to skin it with your baby:
- Temperature regulation for your baby
- More stable heartbeat and breathing
- Increased oxygen levels
- Decreased stress from parent
- More successful initiation of breastfeeding
Tests for Your Baby
Your baby will be examined by nurses and doctors many, many times during your hospital stay. He or she will also undergo several tests in the first 24 to 48 hours. These main tests include:
- Apgar Scale – Your baby is rated on the Apgar scale between one and five minutes after birth and is an essential part of assessing the baby’s initial condition. (To be honest, I had no idea it was even happening because it was so quick.) The baby’s general condition is rated on a scale of 0 to 10 based on observations in five assessment categories such as skin color and heartbeat.
- Blood Test – This involves a small heel prick. This blood test is pretty amazing though because it can look for at least twenty one different kinds of serious genetic, metabolic, hormonal and functional disorders.
- Congenital Heart Disease Test – This test is easy and painless. It involves a sensor being placed on the baby’s skin to measure his or her pulse and the amount of oxygen in the blood. If the results are unclear, the doctor may order further tests such as an echocardiogram or an ultrasound of the heart to determine if there is something wrong.
- Hearing Test – This test is quick and painless. The nurse will put a small ear bud in the one of the baby’s ears, play a sound and the ear sends back an echo. This is then repeated on the other side. The test can be done in less than a minute in a sleeping infant, which is pretty incredible. Newborn babies can fail the hearing test due to temporary conditions or more serious hearing impairments though. Since hearing is a huge part of brain development, the American Academy of Pediatrics considers hearing loss as something that needs to be treated right away. Next steps include being retested after being discharged from the hospital and if the baby doesn’t pass again, you will be referred to a pediatric audiologist for a comprehensive hearing evaluation and further treatment. The ultimate goal is help with teaching your baby to listen and talk!
Other standard procedures in the hospital include:
- Weigh baby and measure length and head circumference. This typically happens multiple times and it is normal for your baby to leave the hospital weighing slightly less than when he or she was born.
- Count fingers and toes.
- Examine baby’s internal organs (kidney, liver, spleen, etc) by external touch.
- Check the infant’s reflexes, hip rotation and umbilical stump. What’s left of your baby’s umbilical cord will fall off with a week or two after birth but until then it is important to keep it clean and dry and keep an eye out for any sign of infection.
- Record the baby’s first pees and poops. Get used to this because your pediatrician will be very interested in it for the first few weeks. Plus it’s a really good indicator of how your baby is doing!
- Administer a vitamin K injection in the form of an antibiotic eye ointment, which will prevent infection. Most babies are born with low levels fo vitamin K so a shot helps to enhance their ability for blood clotting.
- Give baby his first dose of the hepatitis B vaccine.
- Circumcision for male babies. This is not required and is only performed at the parents’ request. It is a quick procedure but requires additional care for a few weeks afterwards until everything is healed.
How You Can Expect To Feel
How you will feel can vary depending on the type of delivery (vaginal or c section), how long you labored, if you have any tears and a variety of other factors.
- You will inevitably feel tired. It’s important to remember that you just birthed a baby and your body is going to need to rest and recover. Plus your baby will be wanting to eat often, you will be changing lots of diapers and it will be a revolving door of nurses and doctors checking on you and your baby.
- You may feel overwhelmed or experience a wide range of emotions. It’s a lot to care for a baby, especially as a first time mom who just gave birth. There’s no manual so you learn by doing!
- You will experience after birth pains. As your uterus contracts and returns to its normal size, you will feel cramping and some discomfort that comes with it. These pains can last two to three days but usually last longer with each following pregnancy.
- You will have bleeding after birth. You will experience this whether you had a vaginal delivery or c section. It is necessary that the body shed the extra blood and tissue in your uterus that helped your baby grow. Bleeding can last from about four to six weeks after delivery. You can expect it to be heavier in the first few days after giving birth and gradually decrease over time.
Expectations for Sleep
While it’s possible that you give birth to a baby that miraculously is a good sleeper, more often than not sleep will be very choppy initially.
Especially in the hospital, I recommend trying to nap as often as you can. Between your baby needing to be fed and changed around the clock, you will also have a non stop stream of nurses and hospital staff coming in and out too.
Although you can’t fully control sleep during your hospital stay after baby, a portable sound machine like this one should be one of your hospital bag essentials since it helps drown out that noise for both you and baby.
Some hospitals will also offer to take the baby to the nursery for a few hours so you can sleep. I recommend taking advantage of it if you’re comfortable with it.
Overall, take advantage of any opportunity you can to rest. Lack of sleep in the first few days can really impact your mental health, mood and have impacts on your postpartum recovery.
Related: 17+ Practical Mental Health Tips You Need To Know Before Giving Birth
How To Handle Visitors
When it comes to having visitors in the hospital or once you’re back at home, you will need to decide what you are and aren’t comfortable with.
It can sometimes feel uncomfortable to enforce “rules” but your newborn baby’s immune system is still very weak.
Some common guidelines you can enforce include:
- Check with your hospital on their visitor policy.
- No visitors that might be sick.
- No unannounced visitors or other guests with visitors.
- It’s ok to keep visits short or cancel if needed.
- Don’t be afraid to ask for food or help.
- The visitors don’t have to hold the baby.
- Wash your hands before any contact with the baby.
- Absolutely no kissing the baby.
- Don’t forget about the other siblings.
- Be a good listener and only offer advice if asked.
Minimum Hospital Stay
There are many different factors that impact the length of your hospital stay after baby. These include things like hospital rules, insurance, your previous birth history, the type of delivery and whether or not there were any complications.
For a vaginal birth with no complications, you can expect to be discharged from the hospital after 24 to 48 hours.
For a c section, moms are usually in the hospital for four to five days. The hospital stay after baby is longer for good reason though. C section moms will have just gone through major surgery so there are certain things that need to happen before they can be discharged including:
- Walk to the bathroom unassisted
- Urinate without the catheter
- Hold down food and drink
- Pass gas
- Dressing covering c section incision removed and monitored
- Mange pain with the help of the nurses and pain medicine
Things You Can Take Home
There are surprisingly so many things you can use and take home from the hospital. Because of this, you really don’t need to pack too much in your hospital bag.
Items you can use and take home include:
- Formula – If you’re using formula, the hospital should provide you with ready-to-feed bottles like this. Typically parents can bring home whatever they don’t use.
- Baby Supplies – Your hospital should provide you with diapers and A&D ointment (if you have a boy who was circumcised). You can bring home extras of what you didn’t use and in my case, I had a nurse who was stashing diapers for me in my bag 🙂
- Pads and Mesh Underwear – Although the pads are on the thicker side, you can again take home what you don’t use. I recommend purchasing pads or disposable underwear prior to delivery but it never hurts to have extra pads to go home with.
- Water bottle – Some hospitals will also provide you with a giant water bottle to use in the hospital and take home afterwards, which makes staying hydrated even easier.
This post was all about your hospital stay after baby.
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