Visitors After the Birth at Home

[Discomonkfish]

Hello all, this is my first baby and I was wondering if you could advise on when you all felt up to visitors back at home. My mum and dad live down South and I know as soon as I go into labour Mum will set off up to Yorkshire. MIL lives in Wirral so is only 1.5 hours away and I know that they will want to come as well. I'm assuming that I'll be in hospital for about 3 days but do you recommend visitors leave you alone for a few days at home i.e. were you too tired or trying to settle baby in? Or did you feel up to seeing people straight away? Any advice greatly appreciated

We had friends over just for the day when ds was about 7 days old. I was very anaemic and had an infection, looked like shit and was struggling with cracked nipples (not nice having to sort your nipple shields out in the same room as a childless couple). They were fine but did come with a video camera which I really could have done without!

My dp'ws aunty and uncle, who I had never met, turned up the day after I left the hospital.

I let them in, and they stayed for 4 hours. I didn't offer them a drink or anything, but they only took the hint and left when I lay on the sofa and turned my back on them.... I also snapped "Don't touch him - he's asleep!"

Some people can be really rude and my dp was next to useless at standing up for me.

I had ds3 at 3pm on a sat
sunday morning a friends dh let her two kids around to see it
I was still waiting ofr the dr to do my " 6hour pn check"

havent read all the threads, but i would strongly advise you stay in hosp for maximum time to get as much help and advice as you can, tell people they can come to hosp at visiting times as the hosp will shoo them away so you dont have to, then when you get home, ask everyone to give you a week..believe me you'll need it, people may take offence, but they have got to take you feelings and those of you dh and new baby into consideration(speaking from experience!)
good luck

also if yo havent already got one, get an answer machine and let ALL calls go to it, answer them when YOU feel like it

I wanted to show off my beautiful baby within about 1 hour. I was drugged up though after a c-section and relied on my mum to make sure I didn't drop the baby.

DP had to go home for a kip as he was soooooo tired.

my friend phoned me after she'd been home with her dd three days to ask why i hadn't been round to see them yet. my reply was i leave it at least a week before even thinking about visiting. i've told my friend who is due today that when they are ready for visitors to phone us. i'm not going to phone her, i'm leaving it up to her.

when my mate had her dd (many years ago) i was staying with her for the first few weeks and I was irritated at the amount of people popping in, and got really annoyed that people can be so thoughtless...........wanting to get a sleeping baby up so they could have a cuddle.

if they are true friends then they should understand how you feel. and family should know better too.

maybe I just have a very helpful family, but I've loved having visitors round in the days after I've had a baby - they all have to make their own tea and get whatever they want, and take me as I am, but its been fine.
And dh has been there and is quite capable of getting drinks / food for people if they want.
I'm sure they don't want to see me anyway, so if I go and lie down they can look after the baby.
With ds2 I had him at home in the early morning and my parents stayed that night - and bought all their own bedding and towels so that I didn't have to wash anything extra!

Message withdrawn

My advice for easiest life is to get out of hospital asap - you won't get any sleep unless you have a private room and your midwife should visit you every day at home anyway. I would keep visitors to a minimum as well - there's nothing worse than struggling to breastfeed for the first time with your mother in law commenting on why you're not doing it right and your father in law looking horrified at enormous breasts and catheters etc. Unless you can get them in when you're still too high on morphine to care!

lol am!

Sorry - just realised what a rant that was. Just have very vivid memories of those first few hours. Obviously love mother and father in law dearly etc etc