When your baby is born

Immediately following the birth, your doctor will put your baby on your chest for important skin-to-skin contact. This will help your baby feel secure and warm, which can help to reduce crying and encourage feeding.

Your baby’s Apgar score will be taken while he or she is laying on your chest. This measures how well your baby is adjusting outside of the womb by recording heart rate, breathing, colour, muscle tone and reflexes. It’s taken one minute after birth, five minutes after birth and sometimes 10 minutes after birth (if required). A score of 7 or higher means your baby is adjusting well.

Once the placenta is delivered, it is normal to wait until the umbilical cord pulsation has stopped before being clamped and cut. Your birthing partner may be involved in this process if desired.

You will likely remain in the birthing suite with your baby for around two hours. During this time, you can try to breastfeed your baby. Your midwife will offer to weigh and measure your baby, and administer a vitamin K injection. This helps prevent “vitamin K deficiency bleeding”. This is a rare but serious disorder.

After spending some important bonding time with your baby in the birthing suite, you can shower in your private bathroom and have a meal. Your baby will stay in your room with you so you can continue to bond and develop your new parenting skills.

Complications

While your obstetrician and midwives are there to ensure the safe arrival of your baby, complications can occur from time to time. If there are any complications with your baby’s birth, our expert staff will attend to your baby immediately. We have a Special Care Nursery onsite for babies needing specialised care.

You will be kept informed of any situations, and your doctor will discuss any required medical treatments with you and your birthing partner.

Healthy Hearing Program

The Queensland Healthy Hearing Program offers free hearing screening for all newborn babies born in a Queensland public or private hospital.

Buderim Private Hospital participates in the Healthy Hearing Program and uses a new device that can detect hearing loss in new babies with the aim of identifying and treating hearing loss early on.

Read more about the Healthy Hearing Program.

Health Screening

In the days following birth, your baby will go through some important screening to ensure your baby’s healthy development. These simple blood tests can detect rare medical disorders early on so that treatment can start right away to avoid any serious mental or physical disabilities.

Several drops of blood will be taken from your baby’s heel and collected on blotting paper. This will be sent to Newborn Screening for the following tests.

Phenylketonuria (PKU)

This is a rare condition in which babies can’t tolerate the full amount of protein in breast milk or standard formulas. Treatment involves feeding your baby with special milk, which allows your baby to grow and develop.

Primary Hypothyroidism

Another rare condition, Primary Hypothyroidism is caused by an absent, small or improperly functioning thyroid gland. Early treatment with thyroid hormone leads to healthy mental and physical development.

Cystic Fibrosis

This condition may prevent your baby from thriving. He or she could develop diarrhoea and have frequent chest infections. Early treatment greatly improves the outlook for babies with this condition.

Galactosaemia

Galactosaemia is a very rare disorder caused by the accumulation of galactose (one of the sugars found in milk) in your baby’s blood. Babies with this condition can become very sick and die, or suffer from developmental disorders, cataracts or liver disease. Treatment includes giving your baby special milk that doesn’t contain galactose, which will improve some of the long-term effects.

Extended Metabolic Screening

A new technology called tandem mass spectrometry can screen for a range of rare disorders of amino acid, organic acid and fatty acid metabolism.

Some examples of these disorders includes:

• maple syrup urine disease
• homocystinuria
• methylmalonic acidaemia
• disorders of fatty acid metabolism.

These disorders are caused by the presence of an enzyme deficiency, which can result in the build up of an amino acid or a carnitine in your baby’s blood. This can cause them to be very unwell following vomiting illnesses or fasting. Early treatment includes dietary modifications, which can improve your baby’s outlook.

This test can also detect Vitamin B12 deficiency.

Test results

Test results come back normal for most babies. In these cases, you will not be notified of the normal test results.

A very small number of tests will require further diagnostic screening. In these cases, the results will be passed to your doctor immediately for further testing, confirmation and treatment.