To ask you how long you waited before visitors

I think it's very sad when the new grandparents are expected to wait to meet their new grandchild. I can't imagine doing that to my parents or parents-in-law. They all met my children the day they were born.

I have friends who were very wary of any visitors including family. Totally understandable AND the parents are knackered and want to get a bit of a routine so it was a few weeks in some cases.

Our families live in a different country so my mum got to us within 24 hrs of leaving hospital then a week later my sister and her family visited and then my mum came back with my dad and brother for a week.They got an air BnB around the corner.

My husbands in laws stayed with us when baby was a few days old! Actually living with us.

I think for us it was cultural but not sure
my very close 2 best friends came over together with their partners (we’re all really close) a few days once baby was home

Close friends and family visited from the day after we got home. We put PILs off once we were home, as despite telling everyone we didn’t want visitors in hospital as I had a very difficult birth, they turned up anyway. I never felt comfortable in front of them. They were weird about breastfeeding and when they did visit at home after a week or so, kept asking me when I was getting dressed as I was in pyjamas. Also passively aggressively talking to our baby saying ‘mummy can make nanny and grandad a cup of tea and give daddy a rest as daddy seems to be doing everything’. 🙄🙄🙄

They’ll let you know when they are ready, I know you’re obviously very excited but I’d wait and try not to ask.

I was fine with people visiting me straight away but I did make it clear before hand I’ll let them know when I was ready. Some of my friends haven’t wanted anyone for a few weeks think it just depends.

Congratulations!

Family (and close friends) allowed to visit as soon as possible, some came to the hospital. All who came to visit at home understood that they won’t be hosted as normal and most brought food and supplies.

Parents straight away after I got out of hospital (24 hours later with both) Other close family within a week or so. Friends whenever they could fit in after parents.

I was desperate to see my dad and introduce him to his first grandson, as we'd lost my mum not long before. He came to see us two days after DS was born - I wanted him to come the next day but he was having his ears syringed 😂Grandparents on the other side live 4 hours away so I think it was a couple of weeks before they could come. I would happily have seen them sooner, but it was a bigger undertaking because they were actually staying here. MIL came back on her own when DS was about 5-6 weeks old and stayed for a week to help me, which was lovely.

I had my sister (luckily she was in the area) & BIL, my mum, my best friend & her partner visit in hospital asap. My in laws live quite a distance away or they’d have been equally welcome (they came to stay not long after).

I drove my mum on an 8 hour round trip to meet my niece in hospital.

Women today do seem to be taking different decisions and excluding family members for a period. I think that’s a shame, except where there’s a history that justifies it.

No rules, people visited as soon as they wanted (family was far away so it took them a few days, but we didn't ask them to wait).

Baby born Sunday, went home Tuesday. First visitors on Friday. "Or is it until you’ve had a good nights sleep? " - well, you might be waiting years for this... haha. Give it a few days, and definitely offer to bring food - actually, don't offer, just bring it!

With my first everyone came to see me in hospital. My parents, brother, grandparents, aunties etc. it was 2003 though and each bed on the ward had full on family visits. With my others my parents and brother met them immediately on returning home and the rest of the family in the first few days. I couldn't imagine my parents not being there immediately as they are such a big part of our lives.

I think it was the day after for my first - I gave birth in the evening so we had visitors the next day but only grandparents.
In the few weeks after that though , I was really struggling to breastfeed and found visits really tiring and stressful so we kept it at one (if that) visit per day.
With my second, again it was late at night I gave birth, I stayed in overnight and I came home the next day and after a nap I was out in the garden passing baby over the fence to my next door neighbour 😅

Think they all came to the hospital and saw us there xx

And to be honest if our third child had been our first child we would have needed time before facing visitors.

It was so much more intense and difficult the third time that I/we would have needed professional help to process the experience if it hadn't been our third baby.

I also experienced that there is much less help from the staff throughout the entire process compared to the first time we became parents. It has hardly gotten better now 13 years since we had our youngest.

This can be a reason why parents need some time before visitors arrive.

Dc1 I had about 8 visitors over the course of the evening they were born - was kept in for one night.
dc2 - visitors at home the same evening they were born.
dc3 - whole front room was taken over by about 25 family members drinking champagne and passing the baby around the day they were born and I was allowed home.
Got it all over and done with 😂

We had no rules, anyone could visit whenever they wanted. None of our friends and family would overstay their welcome or interfere so maybe we were lucky.

Grandparents pretty much straight away as visited in hospital. Extended family about 4 days

I had parents, sister and niece visit in hospital and all again shortly after I was home.

That was in the last few years.

I just don’t get the whole waiting thing that’s popular now. I’m sure people have convinced one another it’s the right thing.

And the whole ‘baby bubble’ with just the parents is a load of crap imo. It sets unrealistic expectations because realistically being on your with a newborn is boring l, difficult and lonely. Having visitors to share the joy with made it special and the best bits for me.

I’d offer to bring some dinner over that’s easy to do and keep like cottage pie / lasagne etc. I’d also offer, if logistically possible, to come on short notice of ‘now is a good time’ rather than at a time / day and find it been a dreadful night /morning and they’re not up to visitors IYSWIM
congratulations on the new grandchild!

It never occurred to me not to allow them to come straight away, they were so excited (my parents) as it was their first grandchild. I have some precious photographs of that first day

I’ll had to stay a night with dd. The bags were still in the car when one friend turned up (she thought she’d forgotten something to do with my pets) and then another rang and popped in a wee while later. We live far from parents and then Covid happened so family didn’t meet her til she was 5 months old.

I think you need to reframe this as being about ‘we want to meet the baby though’, and think ‘this woman has just been through a massively traumatic physical event that she is now recovering from’.

Everyone seems to forget in the excitement of a new baby, that there’s a new mother there who may have had a very, very hard time over the past 24h, with a long and uncertain recovery ahead of her.