First-Time Parent: The honest guide to coping brilliantly and staying sane in your baby’s first year. Lucy Atkins

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      What happens immediately after the birth?

      Head, shoulders, body…a rush of fluids and astonishment: you’ve done it! It’s a real baby, right there, and she’s yours. Your baby should–the moment she’s out–be put on to your tummy with her skin against your skin (‘skin to skin’), usually with a towel over her to keep her warm. She does not need to be whisked off to be washed, weighed, measured or anything else at this point, unless she needs urgent medical attention, in which case she will be taken to a resuscitation area in the delivery room where the doctor will help her. But if all is well, your baby belongs on you and you alone now, and if possible you want to keep her there, skin to skin, for at least the first thirty minutes of her life. Studies show this really helps mother-baby bonding, reduces crying and helps breastfeeding. It’s really worth putting this in your birth plan as it may not automatically happen.

      If you have a Caesarean and your baby doesn’t need urgent medical attention, ask to have her put immediately on your chest against your skin, lying across your body with your partner’s hand supporting her back or bottom. If she is healthy there’s every reason to keep your baby as close to you as you would after a vaginal birth. You may get knee-jerk objections to this from staff who have never been asked to do it before. But it is your baby, so be assertive.

      After a vaginal birth, if the midwife speeds up the delivery of your placenta with an injection (a ‘managed third stage’), she’ll cut the umbilical cord as soon as your baby emerges. But if you have chosen to deliver the placenta without an injection, the midwife will leave the cord until it stops pulsing. This isn’t as freaky as it sounds: blood rich in oxygen and nutrients carries on going into your baby via the cord for a short while after she is born. Sometimes the cord does not stop delivering this blood to your baby until after the placenta is out. Many dads decide to take the scissors for this historic cord-cutting moment, and it is completely trauma-free: the cord has no nerves, so cutting it is painless for mother and baby, and there is no blood. The midwife then clamps the end of the cord with a plastic clip near your baby’s tummy. This ‘stump’ will drop off some time in the next two weeks, leaving a perfectly formed belly button.

      THE APGAR SCORE DECODED

      ACTIVITY/muscle tone: limp/ no response/active/taut arms and legs

      PULSE/heart rate: absent to more than 100 beats per minute

      GRIMACE: first breath response–none to sneeze or cough

      APPEARANCE: colour–white/ blue/grey to pink all over

      RESPIRATION: (absent to good/cry)

      When your baby is only one minute old, the midwife or doctor will run down a quick ‘healthy signs’ checklist (in their head). They check your baby for five signs that she is healthy, and for each one they give her a score–anything from zero (bad) to two (the best possible). If, for instance, your baby has completely limp arms and legs, she’ll get zero for ‘Activity’. If she is moving a bit she’ll get a one, and if she’s actively wriggling–the healthiest sign in a newborn–she’ll get a two. This score helps them to assess how well she has coped with the birth, and whether she needs any medical attention. The most a baby can get is a ten, though it’s rare to get this at one minute. By five minutes, when the Apgar score is done again, most babies are a good solid ten.

      How soon your baby will want a feed after the birth varies, but if you are both healthy, the midwife should help СКАЧАТЬ