Quick reference · The first yearThe well-babychecks
5 min read · Last updated September 2026 · Written and reviewed by Emma, Birth & Mother
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01
What the U checks are
You will hear them called the U checks, or by their proper name, the U-Untersuchungen. They are a series of scheduled check-ups for your child that begins at the birth and runs to the year before school, each one numbered, each one written up in the same booklet.
They are one of the quietly good things about having a baby here. Nobody has to remember to invent them, they are covered, and they are the same series wherever in Germany you live. What happens at each appointment is your paediatrician's to explain, and there is a national portal below that sets out every one of them in detail.
02
The yellow booklet
At the birth you are given a small yellow booklet (gelbes Heft, the Kinderuntersuchungsheft). It holds every U check: the window each one falls in, and the pages the doctor fills in as you go. It stays with your child rather than with any practice, so it comes with you if you move or change doctors.
Take it to every appointment. Kitas and, later, schools may ask to see that the checks have been done, and the booklet is how that is shown. Some regions send a reminder when a window opens, and some do not, which is one reason the booklet is worth keeping somewhere you will find it at three in the morning.
Your child's vaccination record (Impfpass) is a separate booklet, though vaccinations are often talked through at these appointments. That conversation belongs to you and your paediatrician.
03
The rhythm of them
Each check sits inside a window of days or months rather than on a fixed date, and your booklet names the window for every one. The shape of the series is worth having in your head, because the early ones come quickly:
U1 and U2
Around the birth itself and the first days after it, usually before you leave hospital, or with your midwife where you have given birth at home.
U3
In the first weeks, once you are home. For many families this is the first appointment at a paediatric practice of their own.
U4, U5 and U6
Across the rest of the first year.
U7 and U7a
In the second and third years.
U8 and U9
In the preschool years, the last of the series before school.
The practical part is booking. Paediatric practices in many towns are full, so the appointment for the next check is often best made at the end of the one before it, and a practice found while you are still pregnant is one less thing to arrange in the Wochenbett.
04
Finding a paediatrician, and in English
A paediatrician (Kinderärztin or Kinderarzt) carries out the checks from U3 onwards, and you choose the practice yourself. Where to start looking:
- Your midwife knows which practices near you are taking new families, and often which ones speak English.
- The doctor search run by the regional association of statutory health physicians (Kassenärztliche Vereinigung) lists practices by speciality and by the languages they offer.
- Your health insurer (Krankenkasse) will search for you if you ring them, and can say what is covered if you go privately instead.
- Other international families in your town are the fastest route to a practice that answers the phone in English.
If the appointment will be in German and that is not the language you feel safest in, you can bring someone who speaks both. Asking the practice in advance whether English is possible is a normal question and not an imposition.
05
If you miss a window
Ring the practice and say so. Windows are missed all the time, by families who moved house, families whose baby was in hospital, and families who were simply underwater in the first months. Nobody at the practice will be surprised.
What happens next is theirs to tell you: whether the check can still be done, whether it is folded into the next one, and how your insurer treats an appointment that falls outside its window. If the reason you are behind is that everything is too much at the moment, that is worth saying out loud at the practice too, and there is a page here about the first year that may say some of it for you.
06
Where to read what each one involves
This page is the shape of the series. For what is looked at, listened to and measured at each individual check, these are the places to read, and the people to ask:
- kindergesundheit-info.de, the federal portal on children's health, which sets out every U check in turn. It is in German, ad-free and independent of any company selling anything.
- Your paediatric practice, who will tell you what the next appointment covers if you ask when you book it.
- Your yellow booklet, which names the window for every check in the series.
- Your midwife, for everything in the weeks the U1, U2 and U3 fall in, which is still her time with you.
- Find a paediatric practice while you are still pregnant, and ask whether they are taking new families
- Ask whether the practice can hold the appointment in English, or arrange for someone to come with you
- Keep the yellow booklet somewhere you will find it, and take it to every appointment
- Book the next check at the end of the one before it
- If a window has passed, ring the practice and ask what they suggest
A gentle note
I am a doula, not a medical professional, and nothing here is a substitute for your paediatrician or your midwife. This page describes how the series is arranged and where to read about it; anything about your own child's health belongs with the practice that examines them, and kindergesundheit-info.de is the federal portal behind the checks themselves.
Alongside you
The weeks the appointments sit in
The first checks land in the days when you are recovering and learning your baby at the same time. That stretch has a page of its own, and so does the year that follows it.