In the whirlwind of welcoming your new arrival, understanding what happens after birth is essential. From post-delivery timelines to potential complications, let’s dive into the intricacies of your hospital stay. Whether you’re curious about discharge protocols, routine tests for your little one, or the factors influencing your length of stay, we’ve got you covered. Let’s navigate this journey together, ensuring you feel informed and empowered every step of the way.
If everything went smoothly without any major complications, you will be staying at least 24 hours if you had a vaginal delivery and about 48 hours if you had a C-section. Now this also depends on what time you delivered. A lot of times the hospital is not going to send you home late at night or super early in the morning. So if you delivered at around 11 PM, you would most likely stay all the next night, and leave sometime the day after that.
One main reason is because your baby has a routine blood test that can’t be done until they are 24 hours old. In addition your baby will also have screening for cardiac heart defects, hearing and jaundice. We also want to make sure that your chosen method of feeding is going well, and help make adjustments if needed.
If you have any complications during or after delivery, you could end up staying a little bit longer. Two big reasons are if you had a hemorrhage or are having blood pressure issues we would want to keep you for an extended time because we do want to ensure, everything is on track before we send you home.
If you had a C-section we typically keep you that extra day to make sure that you are up and walking, able to go to the bathroom, and that your pain is under control.
Typically the doctor needs to come by and see you every day in the hospital, so sometimes that could be a potential delay in getting discharged. If you are really wanting to get home asap, let your postpartum nurses and they may be able to try to help accommodate that, but typically we can’t make any guarantees about discharge time.
If you really want to leave on the sooner side, let your nurse know when you move over to your postpartum room. Unfortunately, we can’t give you any guarantees on what time you will be discharged. Both your provider and baby’s pediatrician typically need to see you the day you leave, and we don’t always know when they will be coming to the hospital to round.
Before you go home we are ensuring that:
💊 Pain is under control
🩸 Bleeding minimally
🍽️ Eating normally
🚽 Going to the bathroom/passing gas
🤱🏽 Established feeding plan👩🏼🍼
🌡️ Stable vital signs for both you and baby
💩 Baby has pooped and peed
