Hello and welcome to the Zero to Finals podcast.

My name is Tom and in this episode I'm going to be going through the normal care of a newborn after birth.

And if you want to follow along with written notes on this topic,

you can follow along at zero tofinals.com slash normal care after birth

or in the neonatology section of the zero to finals

pediatrics book. Let's get straight into it. There's a few things you do immediately after the

birth of a newborn. Skin to skin refers to putting the naked newborn onto the chest of the mother

so that their skin can come into contact with the mother's skin.

The umbilical cord needs to be clamped

and this is often delayed to ensure some of the blood from the placenta

flows into the newborn before it's clamped.

And this is referred to as delayed cord clamping.

You want to dry the baby and keep the baby warm with a hat and blankets.

Babies need an injection of vitamin K and we'll talk more about that shortly.

The baby needs a label so that you can ensure that the right baby stays with the right mum

and they need to be measured for their weight, their

length and their head circumference.

Let's talk more about vitamin K.

Babies are born with a deficiency of vitamin K.

Vitamin K is an important part of normal blood clotting.

Standard practice is to give all neonates an intramuscular injection of vitamin K in the thigh shortly after birth.

This also has the helpful side effect of stimulating the baby to cry, which helps to expand the baby's lungs.

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