How quickly the weeks pass by. This week we were running late, and so we had to watch the start of the “issues with newborns” video in the break: there are a lot of things that are quite normal for newborn babies that can seem like major health issues, and the video attempts to show what some of the normal things are, so that there’s slightly less time spent stressing out. Some have cool names, like Cephalhaematoma, others are more mundane, like jaundice. We learned about the different ways to treat the real issues that come up, and when to just think that maybe the baby has overheated because they’ve been wrapped in a heavy blanket.
From there, we split into a blokes group – who headed upstairs to talk about issues around impending fatherhood, and any concerns that we might have (I’m sworn to secrecy on the specifics, but it was a helpful chat) – and a women group, who talked, it seemed, about all the post-natal health issues that might crop up, and what to expect in the first few days of the baby’s life.
Then we joined back together and talked a little about post-natal depression: it affects people to different extents: the mildest being the baby blues that hit around day 3, up to full-blown psychosis that can take place a couple of weeks in.
Overall, it was good to keep talking to the people that we’ve met in the course so far: it will be a little bit sad for it all to be over, I think!