Adoption question

[user1466685631]

Hi, this is my first post on here. Dh and I are expecting to adopt a 5 month old baby in the next couple of weeks. How long do you suggest we stay home with him before introducing him to other people?

[vimtoqueen1]

All SW advise that you only introduce people slowly and few in the first weeks. We brought home a 19 month old and 10 month old, 3 months ago.
We introduced my dad and MIL in the first week and best friend the week after. After that we had a number of visitors.
To be honest because he is so young he probably won't notice too many people but maybe make sure all feeding,changing and comforting is done by one of you and if he cries make sure he is passed back to you immediately.
Good luck - it's an amazing journey !

[OlennasWimple]

You have to figure out what works for you. Eg DD was used to going out every day, and her FC were horrified at the thought of keeping her in for weeks at first. I would also have gone mad without even a walk to the shop and back most days

[Italiangreyhound]

user1466685631 good luck.

Please just go easy how you introduce people, I know baby is young and there is a temptation to think that they will not know what is going on ... but... if people want to hold baby, as they will, you may find baby quite confused. They will be seeing sights and smelling smells and hearing voices, their hearing is highly developed, the best ever from birh (unlike sight). They won't have the language to ask you 'Who was that?' or 'What relation to me are they?'

Our son was 3 (almost 4) when he came to us. I think we waited over a month to introduce him to my parents-in-law and about a further two weeks to introduce him to my sister, and a further two weeks to introduce him to wider family.

Friends took even longer although we did prioritize local friends who we see a lot and as we have dd, birth child, who was 9 at the time she was seeing friends and I was walking her to school so local friends just met him as part of life.

Remember your aim is not to avoid contact with the wider world or to avoid contact with relatives it is to build attachment and an initial bond with the child. TOO MUCH or TOO EARLY contact with friends and family may get in the way of that, so take advice and go slowly, because when friends come round your attention may be off baby and baby's attention may be off you, that (IMHO) is the issue. It's not necessary to be quite so strict with birth children because they have been listening to your voice from about 23 weeks in vitro, but even mums to birth kids may want to limit how much they see people and just spend time with baby.

Exciting times. It sounds great.

Good luck.

[Truffle87]

We left it a couple of weeks, then introduced parents then left it another couple of weeks before anyone else came. We also tried to time it for when LO was asleep on me so that although people got to see LO, LO themselves weren't really aware that people had visited. It's hard to keep people away but they have to understand what your baby is going through.

I have to say, we loved that time just on our own as a family of 3. Once you've broken the seal of allowing visitors it's then non stop, everyone wants to visit ALL the time and you'll never ever have a quiet couple of weeks to yourself again.

The first few weeks are exhausting and don't forget that in terms of visitors you will also have plenty of SW visits and HV. They aren't visitors to you as such but they are people that LO won't know. Whenever we had SW or HV around we'd then leave it at least two days or so with no one else coming into the house so as not to overwhelm LO.

Congratulations! !!!