This guideline covers the routine postnatal care women and their babies should receive for 6–8 weeks after the birth. It includes advice given on breastfeeding, and the management of common and serious health problems in women and their babies after the birth.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
Who is it for?
- Healthcare professionals
- Commissioners of primary and secondary care services
- Women having routine postnatal care for 6–8 weeks after the birth of their baby, and their families and carers
Is this guideline up to date?
We reviewed the evidence in January 2015. We found nothing new that affects the recommendations in this guideline.
Next review: January 2017
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or service users. The application of the recommendations in this guideline is not mandatory and the guideline does not override the responsibility of healthcare professionals to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual patient, in consultation with the patient and/or their carer or guardian.
Local commissioners and/or providers have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual health professionals and their patients or service users wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with compliance with those duties.