Visitors after birth?

[MMurphy1]

Hi all! Welcomed my first baby 2 days ago and my DH and I agreed that our mothers and fathers would be the only family visiting in hospital and our other family respected that. As soon as we got home I was bombarded with texts and calls from other family and I'm wondering when is best to let them visit? I'm still a bit sore and tired. Baby is the first boy in DHs family for 15 years (we didn't find out the gender) so his family are dying to see him.

When you feel up to it.

We didn't visit our new family member until he was a week old; the baby before that was 12 days old when we first saw her. We suggested a tentative time, and said we'd call closer to the date to see whether she felt up to visitors.

I had people over seeing DD almost immediately, but they all only stayed for an hour at most. I didn't mind it because they didn't want or expect food or anything (we made coffees/tea and opened some biscuits, but that's it), and they held and fussed over the baby the whole time. Super easy on me. I just took DD back when she needed a feed, then passed her on to whoever wanted her next!

For what it's worth, we had a boy born earlier this year and he's the first boy in 60 years in the family. Of course everyone was excited and wanted to see him, but ultimately we all waited until the mum was feeling up to visitors. It's not as though he was going anywhere!

Just say something non committal like 'we are enjoying getting to know him and look forward to seeing you all once we have got into the swing of things'. You need to recover first and get feeding established. People go bonkers when a new baby arrives but your new family has to come first.

Tell them you'll let them know as soon as you're ready for visitors. I wanted to see people straight away. Perhaps pre-warn people so they can adjust their expectations, eg "if you'd like to come and see him for half an hour we'd love to see you on Tuesday after work but if you want to hold out for a longer visit then we'll see you in a few weeks.