Lagos has excellent maternity care and dangerous gaps in it, often a few streets apart. The single most important decision is where you will give birth, made early, with a plan for getting there at 3am.

Where to give birth

  • Private hospitals and specialist maternity hospitals, across the city, from small clinics to large hospitals with neonatal intensive care. Ask every one you consider whether it has a neonatal unit and a blood bank, and what happens if something goes wrong at night.
  • Lagos State general hospitals and the state’s maternal and child centres, which offer maternity care at far lower cost.
  • The teaching hospitals, LUTH at Idi-Araba and LASUTH in Ikeja, which take complicated pregnancies and referrals from elsewhere.
  • Primary health centres, for antenatal care and straightforward births.

Many families choose a private hospital for the birth and know which teaching hospital they would go to in an emergency. Do both.

Seeing a doctor in Lagos

Antenatal care

  • Register early in the pregnancy, at the hospital where you plan to give birth. Hospitals expect it, and some will not accept a woman in labour who has not registered with them.
  • Go to every appointment. The routine checks - blood pressure, urine, blood tests, scans - catch the problems that kill: pre-eclampsia, anaemia, diabetes.
  • Ask about malaria prevention. Malaria is far more dangerous in pregnancy; antenatal clinics give preventive treatment. See malaria.
  • Check your health insurance covers maternity, and when the cover starts. New plans have a waiting period before you can claim. See health insurance.

Go to hospital at once if

  • you bleed from the vagina
  • you have a severe headache, blurred vision, or swelling of the face and hands
  • you have fits, or a high fever
  • the baby stops moving, or moves much less
  • your waters break before labour starts

Have this ready

After the birth

  • Register the birth with the NPC - free within the first weeks. See birth certificates.
  • Start the vaccinations. Routine childhood immunisations are free at public health centres, beginning at birth. Keep the child’s immunisation card safe; schools ask for it.
  • The naming ceremony, in Yoruba custom, comes about a week after the birth.

Leave

Mothers are entitled to 12 weeks of maternity leave under the Labour Act. Lagos State’s own employees get more, and fathers in the state’s public service get paternity leave. See employee rights.