Hypocritical quandary about people 'handling the baby' and other such silliness...

[katiegolightly]

In a hypocritical quandary in my head and curious to know how others feel on this. 34 weeks and can?t wait for baby to arrive! I would love to ?start as we mean to go on? and encourage her to be ?socialized? as much as possible. By which I mean it will be lovely to have a baby who is happy to be picked up and cuddled by anyone and not a clingy mummy baby. We love spending time with lots of friends and I don?t want to be precious about welcoming visitors to come and be involved and would hope that our friends and families don?t feel like they need to ask permission to pick her up etc. However, the other part of me is starting to stress about people who (for example) don?t think and put their unwashed mitts all over newborn.

This was spurred by another thread about being upfront about telling visitors when it?s not a good time or that short visits are best etc, and generally hoping your guests are considerate without having to be prompted. For example, given that I am rubbish at asking people to remove their shoes when they come into my (cream carpeted) house (I ALWAYS do this in other people?s homes and it bugs me that people don?t remove them in mine, yet I?m too much of a wuss to say anything), how do you ask people ?would you mind washing the tube and bus of your hands before picking up little one and putting your fingers in her mouth?? etc? without sounding like a neurotic germ-phobic new mum? (I?m quite happy that she?ll grow up crawling around on a slightly grubby kitchen floor at home ? some germs are good, but personally I do draw the line with some things. And I?m not sure how to ?express my wishes? as it were.

For me it feels like there is a fine line between wanting your guests to feel totally at home in my home / with us (which I love) but also them catching a wake up and being generally considerate to other people?s ways and wishes without me having to spell out what I think is obvious / good manners. Perhaps this is just life and I should get over it? Anyone else having a little internal stress about this sort of thing?

Honestly? If you have preferences, you need to express them. Just do so politely. I couldn't give a stuff if people take off their shoes, so would't necessarily think to. But I happily will if asked. You can't assume that people have the same preferences you do.

Aso, your baby will choose whether to be clingy or not, and IME there is very little you can do to change that!

I think you are entitled to be as neurotic as you want with a newborn baby so go ahead and ask people to wash their hands/remove shoes/whatever. After a few weeks you will relax about it anyway and probably laugh at this thread.

It will be fine.

I wouldn't go into defensive mode and over-explain why you want them to wash their hands - just ask politely - 'Would you mind washing your hands before you hold her/him', with no explanation as to why (so they can't grumble or accuse you of over-worrying)

We all get a touch of PFB with newborn. I remember standing guard over my DD to ensure all and sundry did not pick her up! I don't know how true it is but my mum and my MW both told me not to let too many people (save for obligatory family) handle the baby in the first couple of days as birth is a traumatic experience for baby and they will be bruised and being passed around will unsettle/upset them. Could of course be nonsense but in any event I remember being quite protective.

Also agree with secondtimelucky that your baby will choose whether or not its clingy. Having everyone hold the baby straight away will not make it social - babies/children learn to be social as they develop.

As for making guests wash their hands etc, we did, and made people remove jewellery such as rings, watches etc but only because MIL wears tons of heavy jewellery and was prone to scratching DD's face.

I'm expecting DC2.

My daughter, as a newborn, became extremely ill with sepsis from bacteria entering her body. The bacteria is common and harmless in adults but can be lethal to newborns. I still to this day have no idea how she got it as my DH and I were a bit obsessed about hand washing when she was tiny.

I think if we have visitors, I'm going to have a pot of anti-bac hand gel ready and ask them to use it before handling her. I'll explain that I'm nervous after the first time and would they mind indulging me (or something like that).

Don't worry about them being socialised or whatever at such a young age....I think a lot of it is down to the individual baby's character.

Yes, just ask people to wash hands.

By the way, whatever you do won't necessarily 'socialise' your baby (or the reverse). Some babies are sociable, others want to be with their mummy. It depends a lot also on how hungry/tired/over-stimulated/bored they are at any particular moment.

A 'clingy' mummy's baby is just as lovely a baby as a sociable one, when yours arrives you'll hopefully find you're happy with whatever kind you've got!

One good way of getting people visiting to observe your rules is to do the following: finish feeding baby, faff around getting muslin etc, then say to the expectant visitor - 'She's nearly ready for her cuddle - do you want to just wash your hands while I burp her? I don't want you to get sick down your back'. That way the request seems fairly casual but also pretty clear... Likewise some things are best just 'fronted up' at the start - eg for shoes 'We've had the carpet cleaned before the baby arrived so we've got a shoes-off policy now. Think she'll be crawling before we know it!' And so on...

SuseB has great ideas if you don't want to offend anyone but the others are right too, just say what you want and if the visitors are not happy, well, it is their issue. But if they are close friends, they will not feel offended.
I had total stangers on the street, in supermarkets touching my baby when we were in the middle of the H1N1 flu thing. I had to ask them not to with my poor English, I must have sound very rude, overprotective and over reacting but ... who cares ?!
And when my friends or colleagues came for a home visit, I would leave 2 or 3 pairs of my own shoes outside as an example and handle them the anti bacteria hand gel with a smile. I am still in touch with all of them and they still come for visit or baby sitting... 3 years after
I will do the same when the second baby comes.

Thank you everyone, I really appreciate your good ideas! Shoes outside the door and antibac on the coffee table, easy! I know there is a touch of neurosis in me on this, but maybe I just need to grow a pair and let people know it's just the way I prefer it, even if it's not how they do things / did things.

And agree with Secondtimelucky, indeed, all people have different preferences and I shouldn't expect them to always know mine - I know the 'shoes thing' for example doesn't bother a lot of people, but perhaps I just need to find a few pleasant ways of telling people what's important to me rather than rocking in the corner seething and then chewing DPs ears off after visitors have gone lol!

Please do! I would feel awful if I knew someone was seething about me, but I honestly forget to offer because it's such a non issue for me. If you find it easier, you could make a joke of it - 'Would you mind taking your shoes off, can't think what possessed us to buy cream carpets?' type thing?