Your midwife will perform prenatal visits (either in home, or her own office) where she will check typical things like blood pressure, baby’s heart rate, and screen your urine. She will attend your birth, help clean up after the birth, provide postpartum care, and perform newborn tests and the newborn metabolic screening. Your midwife will have all the necessary knowledge and equipment to stitch tears, stop bleeding, resuscitate a newborn, etc.
The midwife will visit you several times in the weeks following the birth to continue postpartum care and provide newborn care (usually up to 6 weeks). If you’d like your newborn to receive a hearing test, you will have to schedule that with the health department after the birth. You may choose to take your newborn to the pediatrician a week or two after birth. You can discuss with your midwife if this is a good option for your family or not.