Background
What Is a Neonatologist?
A neonatologist is a paediatrician with further training in newborn care — what the job involves around birth, and in the growth and development follow-up that comes after.
Last reviewed
A neonatologist is a paediatrician with additional fellowship training in newborn medicine. We care for babies in the first weeks and months of life, well, late-preterm, or in intensive care, and work alongside your GP, MCH nurse, obstetrician and midwifery team. Becoming one typically takes 13 or more years after secondary school: medical school, internship, then RACP paediatric training — basic training followed by advanced training in neonatal and perinatal medicine — leading to the FRACP.
When you’d see one
Most families meet us around a birth at Frances Perry House: your obstetrician requests the paediatrician, we examine your baby during the stay, and clinic follow-up continues after you go home. Some families also book an antenatal consultation, usually because a scan finding, twins, a previous hard newborn period, or a question worth settling before the birth.
Specialist neonatal input matters most when:
- your baby arrives early, particularly before 34 weeks
- your baby needs resuscitation or breathing support at birth
- there’s a concern about infection, oxygen levels, or blood sugar
- a condition was diagnosed antenatally (heart, kidney, neurological)
- feeding or jaundice isn’t following the expected course
- the pregnancy itself was complicated, maternal diabetes, growth restriction, multiples
The work around birth
At Frances Perry House: attending caesareans and at-risk deliveries, the newborn examination, rounds through your stay, managing feeding, jaundice, blood sugar and temperature, and the discharge (“green book”) examination during the stay, with a clear plan for home.
Neonatologists also staff tertiary intensive care, at units like the Royal Women’s and Royal Children’s, looking after extremely preterm babies, ventilation, surgical newborns and emergency retrievals. Almost none of that is needed for a well term baby. It sits in the background of every routine check anyway, and that’s the point.
After discharge: growth and development
The job title makes it sound like the work stops at the hospital door. In practice, a good share of it happens in clinic over the following weeks and months, and the point of those reviews is diagnosis and management — working out which findings need treatment, which need referral, and which just need time:
- Slow weight gain and feeding trouble: sorting out whether the cause is intake, technique, reflux or a cow’s-milk-protein issue, and managing it
- Jaundice that lingers past two weeks
- Following through what hospital flagged: a murmur, a hip that needs an ultrasound, thyroid results, a kidney finding
- Head shape and neck: plagiocephaly and torticollis, picked up early, when repositioning advice and physiotherapy are most useful
- Development: tracking milestones (against corrected age for babies born early) and judging what needs assessment versus what needs time
- Growth concerns: babies crossing percentile lines, and catch-up growth in preterm or small-for-dates babies
The usual rhythm: your MCH nurse checks weight and wellbeing at home in the first week, and the paediatric review sits at six weeks, earlier where the discharge plan calls for it. Babies born early or with a complicated start are followed for longer.
What we don’t see
A practice built around newborns has edges. We don’t take referrals for behavioural concerns, autism (ASD) assessment, or ADHD in older children. Dr Jubal has worked in developmental-behavioural paediatrics earlier in his career; those assessments deserve long, dedicated appointments and ongoing review, which a newborn practice isn’t structured to provide. Your GP can refer you to a general or developmental paediatrician who works in that space every day.
School-age medicine in general, asthma reviews, recurrent infections, continence, sits with your GP and, where needed, a general paediatrician.
Alongside the rest of your team
- Obstetrician: shares pregnancy events and concerns before and after birth
- Midwifery team: daily handover on feeding, weight, settling
- Lactation consultants: joint planning where feeding is fiddly
- Maternal & Child Health nurse: the universal Victorian schedule of growth and development checks
- GP: receives the discharge letter and carries the long-term relationship
- Allied health: physiotherapy (talipes, plagiocephaly), audiology, ophthalmology when indicated
For everyday childhood illness, colds, rashes, fevers in older babies, and for immunisations, your GP is the right first call; your MCH nurse covers the routine growth, feeding and development checks. We come into the picture for newborn-specific problems and for the growth and development questions of the first months.
The practical bit
Newborn care at Frances Perry House happens at your obstetrician’s request; that referral covers consultations for three months. After that, a GP referral (valid 12 months) continues the Medicare rebate for clinic reviews. Details on the fees pages.
Most well babies are served perfectly well by a GP and MCH nurse. Where a birth comes with extra questions, prematurity, a complicated pregnancy, a finding that needs following, that’s the gap this kind of practice exists to fill.
Related
- About Dr Jubal John & the NeoPaeds team, credentials, approach and career
- For expecting parents · In hospital · The first weeks at home
Not sure if you need to see us?
The practice team is happy to help you decide whether an antenatal consultation or newborn review is right for your family.
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