Yellow Book

Your Midwife at your local surgery will give you an A4 Book - Pregnancy and Birth Notes. Also known as your 'Yellow Book'.

This is a really important book and tells your midwife and the hospital everything about YOU and YOUR BABY.

The first page summarises your routine appointments during your pregnancy at the different stages.

Your Midwife should go through this with you and each time you see her, they should outline whether a hospital appointment will be made for you, when you need to book an appointment with your GP and when you need to book an appointment to see your Midwife.

Its always helpful to tick off where you are on this 'Summary of Appointments' and I also found it useful to add the dates of my appointments next to each stage listed. Its always a good point of reference just in case you have a partner with a sieve-head!

Another good piece of advice is...ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS take your Yellow Book everywhere with you. Not just on your routine appointments, but everywhere. The reason for this is that if you're out shopping and you have an accident, the emergency services instantly know what your situation is by reading the contents of the book.

Don't do what I did and forget to take to your first hospital scan. The hospital staff were not best pleased and the 'losing my brain cells already' line didn't work.