Your midwife does not stop at the birth

The feature of New Zealand maternity care that has no real equivalent overseas is that the same lead maternity carer who saw you through pregnancy and labour also looks after you afterwards. Your carer provides care immediately after the birth and for four to six weeks after it.

In that period your lead maternity carer will visit you, or arrange for you to be visited, at least seven times — in hospital and then in your own home. That is a genuinely intensive level of follow-up, and it is the reason New Zealand does not need a separate network of postnatal clinics for most families.

How the visits are arranged

At your first visit after the baby is born, you and your midwife work out the schedule of visits for the next four to six weeks between you. It is not a fixed national timetable; it flexes around how feeding is going, how the baby is growing, how your recovery is progressing, and whether there were complications.

That flexibility is a feature, but it puts an obligation on you. If you are struggling and the next visit is five days away, say so and ask for it to be brought forward. The schedule is negotiable.

What gets checked, and when

Around one week, your midwife will check that your baby is healthy and well, and will measure their length, weight and head size. They will also check that your baby can see and hear well. Weight in particular is watched closely in the first fortnight, because early weight loss followed by steady regain is one of the clearest signals that feeding is working.

At the final visit, at four to six weeks, the midwife repeats the growth and development checks, and — this part matters — checks how you are feeling and asks questions to confirm that you are well. Your own recovery, physical and mental, is explicitly part of the visit, not an afterthought tacked onto the baby's appointment.

Throughout, feeding, your bleeding and healing, the baby's nappies, jaundice, safe sleep and your mood are all fair subjects for these visits. Nothing on that list is too small to raise.

The handover to Well Child Tamariki Ora

Maternity care does not simply stop. Your midwife refers you to Well Child Tamariki Ora services at about three weeks, which creates a deliberate overlap. The handover from maternity care to your Well Child Tamariki Ora nurse then happens between four and six weeks, and from around six weeks of age your baby's care sits with the Well Child provider.

Your midwife helps you choose a Well Child provider. If you have a preference — a particular provider, a kaupapa Maori service, a Pacific provider — say so before the referral goes in rather than after.

The Well Child Tamariki Ora core contacts

Well Child Tamariki Ora is a series of health visits and support, free to all families, for children from around six weeks up to five years of age. The core contacts fall at:

4 to 6 weeks
8 to 10 weeks
3 to 4 months
5 to 7 months
9 to 12 months
15 to 18 months
2 to 3 years
and the B4 School Check

The first of those, at four to six weeks, is your baby's first scheduled Well Child check and overlaps with the end of midwifery care. Alongside it sits a general practitioner check at six weeks, which is linked to the six-week immunisations. Those are two separate appointments doing two different jobs, and it is worth booking the GP one early because immunisation timing matters.

What this schedule does not automatically include

The postnatal contacts are frequent, but they are built around the baby's growth and the family's wellbeing rather than around a single formal maternal examination at a set date. If you have a specific concern about your own recovery — a caesarean wound, a tear, ongoing pain, incontinence, contraception, or your mood — raise it directly and ask for a GP appointment for yourself. Do not wait for it to be offered inside the baby's check.

Postnatal depression is common and treatable, and it can begin at any point in the first year, well after your midwife has handed over. Your Well Child nurse and your GP are both appropriate people to tell.

Between the scheduled visits

The visit schedule is not the whole of your care, and you are not expected to store up questions until the next one. Your lead maternity carer is contactable between visits, and the things worth calling about are more mundane than most parents assume: feeding that hurts, a baby who will not wake to feed, fewer wet nappies, a baby who looks more yellow than yesterday, a wound that is more painful rather than less, or bleeding that suddenly increases.

A fever in either of you, in the first weeks after a birth, is always worth a phone call rather than a wait-and-see. So is a hard, red, painful area in the breast, which usually means mastitis and responds quickly to early treatment.

Where to get help

Until the handover, your lead maternity carer is your first call, at any hour, for anything about you or the baby. After the handover, contact your Well Child Tamariki Ora provider or your general practice. Healthline operates a free 24-hour telephone service for urgent advice, and Plunket and other Well Child providers run helplines and drop-in clinics between scheduled contacts.

Postnatal checks in New Zealand: midwife visits and Well Child