Having a baby, especially for first-time moms, can be a somewhat scary experience. There are so many questions, so many unknowns to face, as well as an overwhelming sense of responsibility for this child that has been put in your care.

Special features writer Sara Westhead recently caught up with registered nurse and midwife, Janet Wheelan, to give new mums some tips on labour, childbirth, and post-delivery care. She has worked on the maternity ward at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital for 11 years.

Q: When planning for delivery, how prepared do you need to be?

A: <$>I think the most important thing when women find out they’re pregnant is to be very open-minded. Some people can be very rigid in their idea of what they want and then, when they go into labour and they don’t get what they want, quite often they feel a bit of a failure.

It’s good for them to have a plan, but I think, for them, they need to understand that things don’t always go as planned, and if it doesn’t, that’s okay as well.

A lot of the obstetricians will try and run through it with them and make sure they understand, that’s fine, as long as everything’s okay. But if things change, then we may have to vary from this birth plan a little.

Q: What are some tools women can use to help them through labour?

A: <$>A lot of women will come in and they’ll have little portable CD players so they can listen to the kind of music they like to listen to. A lot of them like to have dim lights and not a lot of noise and not a lot of people in the room, which is fine.

Q: How can a woman find pain relief?

A: The three pain relievers we have are Entonox, Pethadine, which is an intra-muscular injection, and then we have our epidural analgesi. A lot of women, when they first start out, have their partners rub their backs, or they’ll have some aromatherapy going in the background. Most of them will try and get up and walk around or change their position in bed. Their partners will rub their feet and just try and have a relaxed atmosphere.

Q: What is the biggest challenge most women face after the birth of a baby?

A: <$>The thing first-time moms find hard is the sleep depravation. When you don’t get enough sleep, everything seems ten times worse than it really is. So, the important thing for them is when their baby is settled and fed, whether you bottle feed or breast feed, once your baby gets to sleep, you catnap as well, because you have no idea when that baby’s going to wake. It might wake in half-an-hour, it might wake in four hours. If you can get your head down and have a sleep, that’s the best thing.

Q: How long should a woman stay in the hospital after a normal delivery?

A: It depends. If you’ve got two little ones at home and you know you’re going to be run off your feet, then I would definitely say stay. And certainly for a new mum, if she’s trying to breastfeed, the longer she stays and gets to grips with her breastfeeding, then probably the better off she’ll be. If they feel they can benefit from another day, then certainly.

Q: It takes some time to get used to managing with a baby. How can women make the best of learning how to handle a crying baby?

A: A lot of mums try to get babies into routines, but, a baby is a baby and there is no routine. They will wake and feed and pee and poop whenever. If a baby is crying, and they’re sort of struggling to think what’s wrong, go through the basics: Is the baby hungry? Is it too hot? Too cold? Does it have a wet or dirty diaper? Has it got wind? And if you work through those methodically, you’re going to find, usually, what’s wrong with this baby, and once you’ve sorted that out, then you’ll find the baby will go to sleep.

Q: What are the baby blues?

A: <$>A lot of women, about three days post delivery, will get quite tearful. It’s just a change in their hormones. A lot of hormones circulate in your system when you’re pregnant, and when you’re not pregnant any more, they all start withdrawing. They just get this imbalance and you find they’re very teary, but another two days, that’s gone usually.

Q: What other support is there for new mums?

A: They’re all seen by the community health nurses. They try to get to see them within a week; usually it’s in the first few days. And we do have a system here where we make follow-up calls. We try and do it within the first two weeks of going home, but certainly within the first month, so they don’t feel like they’re going home and they’re isolated.

We do get a lot of mums that aren’t from Bermuda and they don’t have a lot of extended family, so, definitely, we always say to them when they leave, if you have any problems, day or night, call us back.