Am I being unreasonable? Dad to be...please help

[simba86]

My wife and I, married for 3 years, together for 10, in our late 20s are expecting our first child at the end of May.

My wife has never really got on with my parents, particularly my mum, and whilst they live 2 hours away we see them ever couple of months.

I am obviously very excited about becoming a dad. I love my wife more than anyone in the world and so much looking forward to having our own family. I am also looking forward to being a proud dad and introducing our baby to my parents shortly after the birth, when everything has calmed down and my wife is well enough to see not visitors, but our immediate family.

However because of the break down in the relationship between my wife and my parents, my wife does not want me to let them know if she goes into labour, so that they are not hanging around the hospital or nearby, nor does she want them to visit after the birth until she is ready, which she has indicated could be many hours after the birth, or when we go home, or even a week or so after the birth. She is so stressed out about this she has driven off tonight after writing me a letter saying she doesnt want me at the birth, nor does she want me to be her husband.

I can assure you I have been as supportive of her and her family over the past 10 years more than most people could ever imagine, and as someone who has a rare medical condition with no known cure and an uncertain future, an only child, I don't want to miss out on a special moment for me.

I dont want my parents hanging around or interfering and have made that clear to my wife, I just want to share a moment with my parents, my wife and our baby shortly after they are born when my wife ia well enough.

Surely this isn't me being unreasonable....or is it?

Please share your opinion on this

You really think the Mum should be cut out of the whole introductions to the Grandparents, rather than ask them to wait a couple of days until she has recovered from the birth?

Fuck that, that would have made me feel like an incubator surplus to requirements when the baby arrives.

Martorana Post birth I felt like I was in a cocoon with DD and DP. For four days we had no visitors (HV excluded) and it was bliss. We bonded, got breastfeeding established and I was able to relax without any pressure to entertain.

By day 5 when my parents and MIL arrived we were settled and had a sort of routine and everything was lovely. If I'd had unwanted visitors right after the birth I wouldn't have had that peace and quiet.

I don't give a shiny shit if that's selfish. The grandparents will have the rest of their lives to see their grandkids. They can wait a few days right at the start.

Thankfully I have an amazing DP who puts me and our kids before anyone else so I haven't had any problems.

OP your latest posts are a disappointment. You seemed to grasp it and now you've let it slip again. I hope you see sense soon.

Do women who have just delivered (particularly a first-born) REALLY feel happy with losing sight it, baby being taken away for an unspecified period of time...??

Oh bless you OP. You genuinely are clueless aren't you? Can you not see that we're not trying to frighten you, we're trying to help you prevent your utter ignorance souring relationships between your wife and your parents forever?

During labour and birth, and immediately after the birth, your wife is likely to feel more vulnerable than she ever has before. She will need you to be her advocate, to be her partner, to support her, to share in this magical but terrifying, exhausting and painful experience as a couple. It's the perfect opportunity for you to strengthen your relationship as a team- but conversely, you refusing to prioritise the well-being of your wife and child now is likely to result in resentment over the longer term. There's no way the relationship between your wife and parents will improve if you insist on exercising the ownership rights of you and your parents ahead of the needs of your wife and baby.

If you're not able to fully support your labouring wife because you're too busy fussing about the rights of your parents, then I'm sorry but she's right- you wouldn't be the best person to be her birth partner. Because the job of the birth partner is to support the labouring woman, not get first dibs on baby viewing rights.

And just to reinforce what's already been said- this is what happens with a straightforward birth- they aren't stories of complications. Every post-partum mother loses blood -it will be everywhere and it will continue to flood out for weeks. Every woman will be sore and bruised, whether the birth is vaginal or CS. Every woman will be exhausted. The majority of women will need stitching for tears, even after a 'textbook' birth. Many women have continence issues. Many women find that their emotions are totally overwhelmed, and the rush of hormones coursing through their bodies and driving them to protect and feed their new babies rarely aids rational thought about the divvying up of spectator slots.

You seem to think that the baby will pop out all clean and bonny with no effort at all, and that your wife will be sitting there all recovered and serene and hostessy. It doesn't work like that.

Would that even be allowed? Surely the il's would have to go into the maternity unit anyway? (No idea, home births)

No chance Broken.

I'd have shivved anyone who tried to take DD out of my sight in the first few days. It was primal.

Martorama are you the OP a sockpuppet and your name is Alan?

Just one other thing, in terms of 'normal' OP. After giving birth every woman has a wound inside her the size of a dinner plate where the placenta has come away. When we talk about bleeding, think about that. An internal wound the size of a dinner plate.

Exactly. Primal. Wimmins' 'ormones...?? You're damn right - and no court in the land would convict.

I can remember the rush of rage I felt, standing in a shop even a few weeks after the birth, when someone came between me and the buggy and I couldn't see my daughter. I wore her most of the time, then people were less likely to invade OUR space.

Martorana- I'll respond to your suggestion.

Firstly, I can't imagine any hospital allowing the baby off the ward until mother and baby have been signed off to go home and can be escorted off the ward by a midwife. Maternity ward security is , quite rightly, exceptionally tight.

Most delivery wards allow no visitors other than the birth partner, so it's unlikely that the ILs would be allowed in. Depending on visitor policy, it may be possible for the ILs to visit the post-natal ward if the new mother is happy for that.

Most importantly- why the fuck should any new mother have their baby taken from them to satisfy the demands of any other person?

I'm speaking as someone whose MIL was the first person aside from DH and I to hold DC2. She came to visit us in hospital the same day and was more than welcome, and I was glad she was there to hold the baby- I actually have very fond memories of that visit. But the difference is that we already have a good relationship, and she has always said that she'll willingly support us but we are the parents and she would never try to override that. Her way of supporting us was to help DH care for me, not to insist that he put her wishes first.

There is no way my newborn would have been allowed out of my sight within those first few hours.

My parents turned up at the hospital as soon as I had DS, it wasn't DHs fault, I was in hospital before with PE and they had planned to visit anyway. I was still in the delivery room, for some reason the hospital let them in without even asking me, I hadn't had a wash/clean up or anything. They were there within half an hour demanding to hold him, DH hadn't held him at that point and had to ask if he could hold him first. I'm still saddened by it that those first precious moments were stolen from us. Thankfully they were our babysitters when I had the DDs so it couldn't happen.

When I had my DS1 my mum (250 miles away) drove up to be with us. I am eldest DD and DS1 is her first grandchild. My DH rang his parents to say we were going to the hospital, and without warning PIL arrived at the hospital and MIL did not leave. She stayed with us for the entire labour, uninvited. I felt I couldn't say anything because I had my mum there, but even now almost 6 years on I really wish I had. Turning up uninvited then became a thing, I had had a 48 hour labour, stitches, I was trying to establish breastfeeding and my MIL kept arriving at my house without warning. It finally came to a head when DS1 was 10 days old and she arrived at our home at 8.30am uninvited with an enormous swing thing we had asked her not to purchase

I've not read all the responses so apologies if I'm repeating what has already been said here. Your DW is scared and vulnerable right now. During labour she will be more scared and more vulnerable. She may be in labour for 4 hours, she may be in labour for 4 days. You don't know, you cannot predict it. She wants you focusing solely on her and your baby. Pregnancy, labour & birth puts a woman's feelings under a microscope. A really big microscope. It may seem OTT to you, but to her its everything.

When the time comes you say nothing to your parents.

You obviously don't get it, but YABU.

Recovering from giving birth and adjusting to having a baby are massive life events. You and DP will be on a total rollercoaster, emotionally and for her physically and hormonally.

Was in exactly the same position as your wife.

Giving birth = bloody stressful enough without threat of in-laws hanging over me. Was nightmare. I cracked and agreed MIL could come and see baby. Worst decision ever. PLEASE don't put her through it.

Look, you have some rose-tinted idea of what it's going to be like. When your LO arrives, you will be far too busy / smitten / sleep-deprived / 'oh god what do we do with a baby' to care about anyone else, and that's exactly as it should be. THIS is your family now. Prioritise it.

My mother was my birth partner. I had a CS and she plucked DS off my chest when I was in theatre and took him out to meet the rest of my family. Although I didn't say anything at the time (7 years ago), I still get the absolute rage every time I think about it. He was probably gone for about 2 mins and I may well have agreed to it at the time but I wish someone had stopped her. I felt like someone had ripped my arm off

Btw, in my post at 13:19 I should have typed 'derailed' not 'detailed'. Our reason has not been derailed, clouded nor lost in a pile of fluff and cuteness when we gave birth.

The people posting here are just as reasonable as you are and probably more capable of assimilating information, of empathy, insight and mental dexterity than you are (based purely on your rather intransigent / stubbornly unmoved post today). They also have more experience of birth; their own, their friends', their ante-natal colleagues', than you.

I didn't think I'd be the person to raise this, that is I'm surprised no-one has yet but, telling us that it's understandable our judgement and objectivity may have been overwhelmed by our personal experience and, telling us we should think more carefully about how we express ourselves to the inexperienced (specifically an inexperienced person who came here and asked us a direct question), as if we wouldn't have, risked sounding quite patronising. You're trying to make excuses for us not telling you what you wanted to hear. You need to look to yourself, not us, to reconcile that disparity.

Maratona,

Every single minute you spend (not your wife, but you) on entertaining visitors in those early days will delay the recovery of your wife. Those minutes, you need to take baby and look after it, so that she can eat/rest/sleep.

I had my inlaws round for the day two days after we came back from hospital, despite having visited whilst we were in hospital. And it was hugely unfair, as I had to worry about the house being clean and tidy, and despite me not having to come downstairs, I could hear them and couldn't sleep. I was so badly sleep deprived and because of that and other recurrent visits, I ended up getting an awful infection which meant my baby had to have breast milk that had traces of antibiotics etc. I will for ever regret that, and possibly never forgive DH for that. Don't make the same mistake.

Martorana, IME there wasn't a "visitor's room". When we were over approved visitor numbers the extra relatives had to go to the cafe or wander the corridors to occupy themselves. And the hospital wouldn't have allowed a baby out of the postnatal ward without the mother or a member of staff anyway, even if there had been one. And the OP specifically wants a moment with his new baby, parents and wife.

And as everyone else has said, the wife in this case hasn't said the grandparents have to wait a week to meet the baby. She's said that it could be hours after the birth, but that she doesn't want them in until she's ready. Did you have your IL's in before you were ready? No? Then it's much the same, frankly.

The OP seemed to think that she should be "ready" within a couple of hours of giving birth. We've just explained why she probably won't be and why it's sensible for her to refuse to commit now, two months in advance, to a specific timescale for the visit.

I wondered that too fecker.

Firstly congratulations on your impending parenthood!

I don't think you're being entirely unreasonable, but maybe a little naiive about the situation. There are of course, 'horror stories' of births - but every woman, every baby, every birth is different. I'd rather be armed with the knowledge of as many different scenarios as possible than to go in to the situation with no idea of what might happen.

When I went into labour I don't think we told anyone - mainly because it was around 1am. Labour can last AGES. And it did. There is definitely no time for phone calls etc. (unless, like an aquaintance of mine puts it "you've had more than three children and are an old pro at it").

I ended up with an emergency C-Section after a two-day labour. I had slept for one hour. DH had slept for about four. We both felt dreadful.
When DD was born I haemorrhaged and had to have a transfusion. There was no way I'd have wanted visitors, and I'm close to my ILs.

They did come and visit at the hospital, for about 20 minutes, in the evening of DD's birth. That was more than enough for me.

For the first two weeks, DH and I were stunned, amazed, shocked, horrified, delighted, ecstatic, depressed, sleep-deprived, absolutely smitten and absolutely terrified. Quite often all at once. Definitely take the first week or so to get acclimatised to a new way of life, and a new family dynamic.

Sorry thought maratona was OP

God I am getting stressed just remembering it. MIL walked in and said 'Give me that baby'.

OP, I am presuming your DPs aren't this level appalling!

You know, when you hand your newborn to someone to hold, you can tell they smell different when you get them back?

"Every single minute you spend (not your wife, but you) on entertaining visitors in those early days will delay the recovery of your wife." Bullshit

"Those minutes, you need to take baby and look after it, so that she can eat/rest/sleep." And is there any reason why, while he is looking after the baby, he can't also introduce it to his mother? Or is the baby's mother in control of what the father does with the baby while she is asleep???

I really really wish the ante natal classes HAD mentioned how much blood loss is normal - that was a real shock to me.

Now, when I meet new fathers to be at work and they start talking about the birth as if it is a car visiting a garage I do tell them sotto voce "don't get alarmed at the amount of blood!" ...and the fact your wife won't be able to eat for HOURS and will be exhausted and starving hungry at the end of it.

And stock the freezer with bags of frozen peas so you can sit on them to 4 days after birth....best advice EVER.

My MIL used to be a doula - she turned up when I was home about 4 days - cleaned the house, cooked the meals, fed the cats, told DH what to buy from Boots, looked after DD during the night so I could sleep through - but she's one of a kind.

Martorana are you a MIL by chance? What's the desperate urgency in getting their hands on the baby, none of us are incubators, don't you think we might want to have some time with our babies as well or is that selfish of us, oh dear I am sorry, I didn't realise I should be bending over backwards to accommodate the extended families need to cuddle a newborn, they can wait, a week old baby is still as precious as a 1 hour old one, their son is an adult with a wife to take care of - he's no longer the child in the relationship he's the father and it's time for his parents to realise that

Well, I guess she'd like to be asleep next to her few hours/ minutes old baby