Midwife Mondays 5: Breast Feeding & Examining The Newborn

These weeks are FLYING BY! It’s a little bit scary when I think about it really! We only have one more week in uni and then we are out on practise pretty much until Christmas! I can’t quite believe that we are being considered responsible enough to be going out and working with women so soon – I feel like I’ve just got so so much more to learn – but at the same time, I’m so ready to get out there and learn as much as I can! Eeeek!

This week was a good one, we started on Tuesday, after a LOVELY 3 day weekend, with Infant Feeding. Support for post-natal mothers trying to feed their babies is something that is so key in this job, and as I’m heading out onto the community in a week’s time, having a bit of knowledge about how to provide that support and the ideal positioning for attachment if the mother is breast-feeding has made me feel quite a bit more prepared for what is to come!

On Wednesday we had another day in the skills lab, learning how to do an abdominal palpation – working out through feeling the abdomen which position the baby is lying etc. We also learnt a bit more about infection control and how to glove up properly – which is so much more complicated than I ever anticipated – keeping a sterile glove sterile means only touching certain bits of it to put it on – and with freshly washed hands – Oh my god! I’m gonna have to practise that one!

On Thursday we spent the day studying minor disorders in pregnancy – conditions that can occur during pregnancy that we need to be aware of – who knew that pregnancy can have so many difficult side effects?!?! We also had a bit of a talk about our group assessment. It actually takes place in January but as we are all about to go out onto placement, we won’t actually see much of each other between now and then so we needed to start getting our brains moving about it all…bit scary really to think that on top of uni work and placement work we need to be thinking about assessment prep too!

Friday’s morning lecture was all about public health and health promotion. We started thinking that we didn’t know much about it but through discussion we realised that actually we know a LOT about it already. Then in the afternoon we learnt about examining the newborn – all the things to check on the newborn baby – arms, legs, fingers and toes being just a scratch on the surface. Throughout the 3 year course, in addition to our degree, we also get our NIPE (Newborn Infant Physical Examination) qualification – so this was a bit of an insight into what we will learn when we start that qualification too.

I cannot believe we are about to enter into our final week of uni before we go out on placement. This time next week I will be in the car, heading to my first official shift as a student midwife – and I couldn’t be more excited if I tried! 🙂

To read last week’s “Midwife Mondays” post, click here.