To ask you how long you waited before visitors

I had visitors immediately. Even though my first labour was extremely long and painful leading to induction and a complicated episiotomy. I still wanted to see close family. My DD who had an emergency section also had visitors immediately.
Obviously new parents should do whatever seems right for them but for us seeing people was much better than hibernating

Right away with all of mine. 3rd was a long term nicu baby and on their long awaited return home I had immediate family, friends and neighbours in for a cuppa. I actually felt more relaxed when we had company as opposed to sat myself with baby replaying the nicu time.

Mine came to the hospital but honestly I just wanted to scream at them all to go away. I was barely functioning and it was so overwhelming. I just needed a few hours of calm with my husband before everyone else piled in. You’ve done the right thing by asking first. Just be led by them

My parents came the day after I came home from hospital, I was so pleased to see my mum and to let her hold my baby, her first grandchild for the first time. It is a very special memory. Close friends came a few days later but always rang to check first and i recall one not visting because they had a cold. It depends on how thoughtful and sensible people are, guess I was lucky to only know people who were both.

As soon as we got home (which was a few hours after birth each time - but if I had been in hospital longer I wouldn't have wanted visitors there)

I think there's more of a trend these days to wait...

With my DDs my parents bought us home from the hospital and PIL were already in my house with dinner ready whenever we were. Both set of parents popped by every day either with food, or to take the dogs out, for about the first month. It was brilliant - I didn't have to worry about a thing, and there was always someone there to help.

But I am incredibly close to my parents and my PIL - holiday together, see each other at least once a week etc. I imagine it would be very different if we weren't as close.

Hospital with my first. Then second it was the day we got discharged (had her at 10:36 the night before, discharged at 1pm next day)

As soon as we got home. I was always desperate to show the new baby off to our family and friends, I've never understood the desire to wait weeks. Our fourth baby was born at the very beginning of the first lockdown and it still upsets me that people couldn't come and see her as a newborn.

I've had 4. All grandparents visited in hospital. One V birth. 3 C sections. My sisters came next day.

All other friends and family after a week or so. Congratulations 🎉

We had a lot of visitors immediately with our first but it really took its toll.

With our second we waited about 10 days

I've only really experienced this waiting for visitors thing on here.
My sister (not a mumsnetter) had my nice at about half past midnight. I stayed respectfully away as I'd read on here you need to give a new mum space. At midday she rang me to ask where the fuck I was and why hadn't I been to see her yet. She was absolutely baffled when I explained the reasoning and demanded I hoof it to the hospital immediately for cuddles and so she could brag about this gorgeous tiny human she had produced.
All grandparents and BILs sister also visited in hospital and she stopped at our Nanas on the way home.
With my nephew I met him the day she went home (about 14hrs after birth), but only because he was born in April 2021.

My mum and MIL didn't drive. DH went round with photos the next morning and we visited them both on our way home from hospital. After that we didn't visit them for about a week or so but I am sure there were phone calls. They didn't come to us unless we fetched them so mostly we went to them. Friends and BIL visited us in week 2.

Next day in hospital for my mum, PIL came to our house the day after

We planned for a week after birth but baby was in the ICU for 2 weeks, so it ended up being around 3 weeks as we had to get resettled at home and my family had all mingled over Christmas so had to ensure no one was ill as baby was still so vulnerable 💖

Nearest family to us is 200 miles away which made a bit of difference.

DS13 - my DM, DStepDad drove over whilst I was in labour and met us when we came home from hospital. Stayed at ours (we had the space) for three to four days. Were joined on day 2 by my DBro and SIL. It was overwhelming in terms of numbers but they were all honestly amazing. They cleaned my house, cooked, shopped etc. DM got up with me in the night to support me to BF. I was anaemic when I came home and I don't know how I would have got through it all with just DH by my side.

In laws arrived a week later. Demanded to hold the baby constantly, wanted to go out for meals (even though I was bleeding heavily etc) and made comments on my post birth body. They didn't even offer to make me a cup of tea. MIL said at one point it was her job to hold the baby whilst I caught up on cooking, housework etc. It was awful.

DD10 was similar but without DBro as he had his own small baby at that point. I was a lot more relaxed.

I think if you have a family like mine then having them over post birth can be a tremendous help. But if they are like my in laws I can understand why people say no to visits straight away!

I think it all depends on your relationship with your son and his partner and how the labour went.
I have a very close relationship with my parents and had the dream labour. I had my little boy at 06:06 and my mum and dad were at the hospital having cuddles by 14:30. We were home the following day and we had my husband's family and some of my friends around that afternoon.
I think if we had a difficult or traumatic labour or poor relationships with our immediate families, we might have stayed in the newborn bubble for a week.

13 and 10 years ago:

DC1 - my mum and aunty (who is a midwife) were at the hospital, mostly keeping DH calm as that was a long difficult birth progessing through various interventions to an emergency section. The following day my dad and brother came to meet the baby as did my best friend and his brother. That night I was transferred to a small midwife led unit in a little cottage hospital. It was just me and one other lady there along with a couple of midwives. The next day I was visited by more aunties/uncles/cousins/friends (there was loads of space to do this as the hospital was empty) and DH went to collect MIL who was desperate to see the baby but FIL was ill and it was too far for her to drive alone. It was nice having everyone visit, it would have been a bit quiet otherwise! MIL stayed with us for a couple of weeks when I got out, which was a little overwhelming.

When DC2 arrived we were living in a different place. We also had a dog so took him down to stay with MIL so we didn't have to factor in dog walks etc alongside everything else. Planned section in the morning with just DH at hospital. Mum looked after DC1 and brought him to meet the baby that afternoon. Very busy ward. I had to stay 2 nights with next to no sleep as it was so busy. Most of my family came to meet DC2 in the days after I got back. Midwife aunty came and stayed for a few days as I had lost a lot of blood so she was looking after me and cooking, cleaning, everything. She was amazing. When I was feeling up to it (probably 3 weeks) we took the kids down for a visit to meet in-laws. It's normally a 3-hour journey but took a lot longer due to having to take breaks for feeds/car seat times etc.

The morning after I gave birth, my mum and dad came up to the hospital, and my mother in law came up in the afternoon, my best friend popped in during the afternoon too, she was a nurse on another ward. I was more than happy to show my new baby off.

Boring

For dc1 My in-laws had a 3hr drive to get to us and arrived during the 2hr closed window in the afternoon. The midwives were happy to let them in with our permission.

My parents arrived after work.

*my sons partner had a baby

My mum and sister came the day after we got home from the hospital, my partners mum, sister and step-dad two days after that. At the time I was happy agreeing to all this, and it maybe would have been fine if the visitors had stopped at that, but in hindsight I wish we had asked people to hold off. It felt like my partner’s two weeks paternity leave was just spent hosting different family members every single day and we barely got a day to ourselves with our precious newborn. My experience certainly wasn’t that people came and looked after us - we were always the ones making tea, cleaning up etc. Also, handing over the baby even when I just wanted to hold her myself. We had a difficult start to breastfeeding and having people around so often was not helpful. If I could go back and put my foot down I would, but at the time I didn’t want to be seen as being mean when everyone was excited about a new baby in the family.

my mum was already in my house when i came home both times (second time she was looking after our older girl!

Oh and with DGC. I was at births of DGD1, Dgs1 and DGS 4. The other 2 I saw at 2 weeks and 5 weeks ( distance)

Our family isn't very involved so they wouldn't ask to come soon after the birth anyway. But if they had, we probably would have asked to wait for 3 days.

I've had C-sections for all my kids, and 3 days is the time it takes for the most acute pain to start fading.