To ask you how long you waited before visitors

[Starlightsprite]

After you had your baby?

My son and his partner had a baby yesterday morning and came home the same day. I have asked that they let us know when they are ready for visitors and they said that they will.

I am of the generation (is it generational?) that your immediate family were welcome straight away unless there were issues like the baby being poorly or the mother needing more recuperation than average and I couldn’t wait for my family to meet my babies. I already knew people were moving away from this though as I’ve seen it on here so I kind of knew not to expect to visit immediately.

So my question is what were you waiting for in terms if having people visit you? Do people just want a week to themselves in their little bubble? Or is it until you’ve had a good nights sleep? Or until yuh feel more comfortable? I just am wondering how people are doing it these days as I’m dying to meet my grandchild obviously.

There are no underlying issues here by the way, I get along fine with my DIL and son.

1983 baby born at home Friday afternoon, friend popped in on Saturday afternoon, two work colleagues visited after work on Monday.

1989 baby born in hospital Sunday evening, grandparents visited Monday afternoon, we went to them on Tuesday afternoon on our way home, back on the school run with baby on Thursday morning.

My parents came to the hospital (300 miles from where they live) before I was even in recovery!! That was too much and felt quite an invasion.

For the second, my mum was having a huge operation the day after I had the baby so we went down (300 miles) to introduce the baby when he was a week or 2 old 🙃

DC3 - my parents were looking after my others and so they met her when we came home the next day, they did make themselves scarce though thank god, as did i.

I’d be surprised if a grandparent had to wait more than a few days assuming everyone healthy.

My in laws came to the hospital,

I was furious as I’d had twins and both were in neonatal intensive care, and I was very ill myself.

my dh had to stop helping me and spent a couple of hours taking them to NICU to see the twins and then chatting with them at a coffee shop.

cannot imagine how they thought it was appropriate when we were all so ill.

Mum and dad came the first visit(after dad and siblings), pil the next, sil and bil the next day, then friends(this was in the days of 10 day stays after a section.) Dd there was just mum left so she came with dh and her brothers. I was so proud and happy I wanted to show them off to the world! Even after a long labour and section. My dad almost burst with joy!
My nephew (6) everyone was welcome as soon as they wanted.

My children are 4 and 2, I stopped by my in laws on the way home from hospital with #1, and then my family came over once we were home. With #2 my in laws were there when we got back with my eldest, and then my family came over the next day.

I mean I had 2 relatively straightforward births but I was so excited to show them off too family! No way I could’ve waited 😅

That said, they did all ask before coming over, and whilst of course they had a snuggle, they also brought food and snacks, washed the stuff from my hospital bag, made sure the house was clean and the dogs were walked etc, so there was no resentment or expectation that we “hosted” them which I sometimes see on here.

I had a home birth and close friends and family came round on day one. Then we had some more visitors over a couple of days, and then I said "Enough!!" as I just wanted to shut the door on the world and be in our "bubble".

But definitely my DM on day one.

I wanted to see my mum and my mil ASAP. They were the two most important women in my life. They both came the same evening (about 7 hours after DD was born). I simply couldn't wait.

Baby’s Siblings and grandparents in the hospital. Aunts and Uncles all called over a few days. I was keen to show off my baby and had straightforward births.
When people called I held the baby and they made the tea. I bought a few boxes of biscuits before and they could help themselves.

I have a crackers neighbour who called with a half eaten pack of biscuits and an orange. She didn’t make it past the door!

I would find it difficult to wait but you have to do what’s asked.

Same day for my mum and sister, next day for MIL and her partner. I could have waited a bit longer for people to see her but when it came down to it I didn’t mind and I couldn’t have slept even if I’d wanted to. I was completely wired and didn’t sleep for about 30 hours.

We told all family and friends to give us 2 weeks. Then we slowly started allowing visitors. I felt so emotional and overwhelmed after birthing both my children. I just wasn’t up to multiple people asking ‘so how was the birth?’ So soon after when I was just processing it myself. I was also very prone to random emotional outbursts so didn’t want to do that in front of people. But after the Initial
hormones settled we were happy for visitors.

I think it’s quite a personal thing so what other people did might not be that helpful.

Even a birth that looks relatively “straightforward” from the outside (ie no complications) can hit you like a bus. I felt worse after DD2’s uncomplicated birth than I did after my major PPH with DD1.

There’s also probably a midwife visit today, possibly at an unknown time - I was never given a time. So your DIL may not want you to have just arrived and then have a midwife come, and then sort of send you away so she can ask about her nipples and her stitches or whatever personal stuff she might need to ask about.

My best friend and my in-laws came to hospital. My mum and dad came to say for a week the day we got home, my brother and BIL and SIL all came the week he was born..We we're out for dinner 3 times in the first week.

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.

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)

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!

*my sons partner had a baby

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.

Boring

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.

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.

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.

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!

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 💖

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