We want to get settled before we get trampled on by my parents and PILs.
We're expecting our first baby next year. We live overseas from both sets of parents; both sets are young and independent enough to organise their own travel without any help from us - i.e. we're going to have to give them early and firm instructions about what we want, because they might well make their own travel decisions with absolutely no reference to us before booking anything.
Because of the likely stress involved in having a first baby, and the fact my relationship with my (frequently silly, rude, truculent, abusive and generally quite nasty) parents is strained, we don't want them visiting us - and very much don't want them staying with us. They would not be helpful - my mother's version of "help" is martyred half-doing things that other people then have to fix/finish, while whinging to everyone about how put-upon she is, and hissing vicious nastiness at me when I'm alone with her. My father will alternate between expecting people to wait on him, flouncing out of the house and sulking if someone (e.g. a new baby) does something he doesn't like (such as crying), and being angry and aggressive. Even if they don't stay with us, they're likely to massively increase the stress levels. I'm kind of on permanent red-alert having grown up with them, and I find it really hard to cope with stress because of them. The stress of a new baby combined with my parents is going to be really, really hard.
PIL are better, though very arrogant. MIL has the really unfortunate habit of kissing all her descendants on the lips all the time, while sporting extremely frequent gigantic cold sores. All her previous grandchildren have ended up with HSV infections while they were babies (thankfully not causing neonatal herpes). I would like to avoid this, but neither MIL nor FIL is the type of person to pay any attention whatsoever to a daughter-in-law who politely asks MIL not to kiss the new baby on the lips. DH agrees with me, but his mother is just going to ignore him too, while his father scoffs at him. I've seen them do this before over other things. DH's sister didn't want her kids infected with HSV either, but MIL refused to change her behaviour. Generally, MIL will judge me and probably be a bit unhelpful (she's polite, but clearly thinks I'm a bit useless).
That said, we're not going NC with either set of parents. We recognise it's their right to meet their grandchild, and that they may well want to meet the kid as soon as possible. However, how long can we put it off realistically before it looks like we're being obstructive and not recognising their needs?
i'm thinking 3-4 months? Is that too long?