Description

A midwife shows her parents how to wash a new baby, taking care to avoid the naval area. And she explains how the stump protruding from the newborn baby's belly button will drop off naturally after the clamp is removed.

Transcript

Amanda Mansfield: I am going to undo baby girl now and I am going to examine Mia's skin just to see how it is. Often the skin can be quite dry after delivery, because they have spent nine months in a womb with a lot of warm water. So you notice that it is dry. Now in terms of putting any thing on it, best thing is to use not-based oil, because we think that that they have potential to cause allergies. So any sort of pure olive oil, you don't need to spend a lot of money and just have a small top of it and then you can gently rub it into her skin. What we do is while everyday when we check the baby over is we examine the umbilical cord stump and we also look at the clamp that was applied when your baby was born. And what you can see is it's drying up and it's going to fall off within the next couple of days. So what you will notice is the midwife pops today or tomorrow, will come and remove this clamp and then the little stump that will just dry and fall off on its own, you may notice in the nappy or in her baby clothes at some point. Parents: Okay Amanda Mansfield: In terms of keeping it clean what you need to do is use water and cotton wool, she is listening to us, and just gently wipe around the stump and then once you are finished wiping it. And if it's got any urine on that or a bit of baby poo, then just water and then just dry. That's all you need to do. You don't need to handle the umbilical stump anything else. Okay?