Photo by Linda Eller-Shein from Pexels
We have this weird practice in our culture that no matter the circumstances of our birth, we should be leaving the doors to our room wide open so that everyone in the extended family can come and visit. The FBC units at hospitals are usually the only ones that don’t have strict visiting hours. It’s the one place in the entire hospital where if the baby is born at 3 am and Grandma must meet her new grandchild at 3:05 am, she will be welcomed with open arms! But is this the best policy?
I tell folks on my tours that if they have tons of extended family in the area then they have my permission to lie when it comes to visiting hours. They can say that the visiting hours are only on Tuesday mornings from 6:15-6:45. Whatever they need to do to keep the visitors away. If the birthing person has help (they should always have at least one person who stays with them the entire time they’re in the hospital to help with the workload that comes along with a newborn) then really everyone else should just stay home and leave the family alone.
Unfortunately, not enough new parents understand this and so they actually invite visitors to come and see the baby. They end up with a steady stream of people walking in and out throughout normal waking hours while their baby is sleeping (and the parents should be sleeping!) and then there are never any extra hands in the middle of the night when baby is wide awake and parents so desperately want to be asleep! When we’re receiving visitors, we force ourselves to be up and chatty and peppy and ready to show off our little angel – but inside, we might be wanting to just snuggle with our new baby, learn how to get the hang of feeding and doze on and off throughout the day.
When we have the internal struggle between what we think we “should” be doing and what we really “want” to be doing, this causes conflict. We fake it most of the time and when the visitors finally stop coming, we break down from exhaustion or from our hormones shifting – and our partners have to pick up the pieces.
The only things parents should be worried about in the immediate postpartum period is getting to know their newborns, learning how to breastfeed, and beginning the physical and emotional recovery process. Every single visitor we entertain takes away from all three of these extremely important and full-time jobs.
Not everyone will understand your baby’s early feeding cues – when your baby starts mouthing its fingers, they’re telling you that they could eat if you were up to feeding them. This is a subtle feeding cue and can be missed by Aunt Marge as she’s cooing at your adorable little one. Guess when Aunt Marge will hand your baby back over to you? When they start crying – a very late feeding cue. You’ll have to soothe your baby before you can even begin to try and feed them, and because they’re only a few hours old and tire easily, they might just fall asleep. You’ve missed out on a feeding session and will need to wait until they wake to try again later.
Your immediate physical recovery can involve fatigue, breast and nipple soreness, and wearing an adult diaper so that you don’t have to change pads every 1/2 hour! Your emotional recovery can mean mood swings that can change minute by minute almost as your hormones try to realign themselves. You need time and space to just be. When you fake a smile and waste energy entertaining visitors, your whole recovery process gets delayed.
This is a post that not a lot of grandparents will appreciate! But some new parents might want to print it off and hand it to friends and family members at the baby shower. You could say something like, “It’s not me – it’s this person, Barb Buckner Suárez! She says that we really shouldn’t have very many visitors for the first 2 weeks! I know, right? If it were up to me, I’d have you all over immediately, but she says it’s not always the best idea – so…” and then just walk away.
Listen, all of your friends and family will still come to visit – even if the baby is over 2 weeks old! They’re still cute as can be and tiny and wonderful, but you’ll be in a different place by then and better able to gauge whether or not it’s a good time for visitors. Partners are fantastic about being the bouncer at the door and making sure that no one gets in that’s not on the list – understanding that the list can be changed at any time, for any reason. There should also be clear communication that the only way a visitor gets in to see the baby is if they bring food. Again, you can decide if it’s a good time to visit with them or not – if not, they need to make another lasagna and try again some other day.
There’s one more thing about visitors – and it’s big. Throughout the whole pregnancy, pregnant folks are given special attention. People are always asking you when you’re due, they open doors for you and give up their seats on the bus for you, total strangers make eye contact with you and smile – it’s so nice. But all of that changes immediately once the baby is out of you! The focus moves to the baby completely leaving you to feel like an afterthought. It’s hard when visitor after visitor streams in and oohs and aahs over your baby and barely makes eye contact with you. You’ve been dethroned and this can sting a little bit. Yet another reason to hold off on the visitors until you’re feeling a little less emotional and a little more on your feet.
I’m not anti-visitors – well, mostly I am – but not completely.
You can have as many visitors as you’d like, they can even stay at your house with you in those first days and weeks. As long as they’re the type of visitor (HELPER!) who does your laundry, scrubs your toilet, makes you healthy snacks, does your grocery shopping, vacuums your entire house – you get the idea. Holding the baby while you make dinner for them is not okay. That kind of visitor should not be allowed near you or the baby for the first three months or so! Be very, very picky about who you choose to come for a visit in those first days and weeks after the baby is born. In this immediate postpartum period, you need visitors who will support you by letting you have as much time as possible working those three full-time jobs – getting to know your newborn, learning how to feed them, and recovering emotionally and physically.
If you limit the amount of visitors in your space in the immediate postpartum time, as well as in those first couple of weeks, I promise you’ll be able to engage with them so much more when you’re ready for them to visit. Protect that bubble of connection between you, your partner and your baby. If you have too many visitors one of them might end up popping it!
When you had your first baby, how many visitors did you want to have? How many did you end up having? Was it too many? How did visitors affect your postpartum period?
