What is a Maternity Nurse?

A maternity nurse is an experienced infant care provider who usually lives with a family and provides 24 hour on-call service after the birth of a baby. A maternity nurse usually works for five or six days per week, though individual arrangements may also be made by a private family and their maternity nurse. In some cases maternity nurses may consider themselves day nurses, in which case they would only be available to assist a family during the day, and others consider themselves night nurses and would work mostly at nights. Despite the name a maternity nurse is not necessarily a State Registered Nurse, midwife or health visitor though many maternity nurses have had one of these past careers.