New parenthood or even adding another baby to your family is a great reason to set new boundaries. This time should be about you and your family adjusting to a whole lot of new things. But before you can do that, you need time to properly recover. This means both physically and mentally. Here are some helpful tips to ensure that visitors don't disrupt that recovery, but instead can help support it.
*TIP* Everything is easier to deal with ahead of time! If someone wants to plan a meal train for you, that is amazing. The best time to plan for that is ahead of time-as much as is possible. Communicate all of your food preferences, allergies, address, and drop-off info to the person setting up the meal train. On this note, if someone wants to give you personal care supplies that you may be needing on a continual basis, state those specific things now, and even have it added to the info on your meal train. Once your baby is here and you can communicate that to your contact person, they can do all of the coordinating with everyone who wants to volunteer to sign up for the available dates. They can also add the time limit for meal drop-offs. They can and they should! The same is true for communicating about visitors in general. Ahead of time as much as possible is best! Also, this is a great time to let it be known that visitors cannot visit if they or someone in their household is sick! Yes, you do have to explicitly state that in order to eliminate the guessing game on their end of, "should I" or "shouldn't I".
Hospital/Birth Center-
Make a plan ahead of time for your visitor preferences. You will get a "golden hour" right after the birth which consists of just you, your baby, and spouse/partner having time together. During this, you'll initiate breastfeeding if you choose to, and this takes time and not feeling hurried. You might even choose to not announce the birth through text/calls until this time is over, as to eliminate feelings of stress or being rushed. This is something you can even make clear ahead of time, if you do not want family or other visitors waiting in the waiting area while you are in labor.
Going back to that ahead of time plan, consider sending it in a group text to family, and a separate group text to friends letting them know your preferences. Feel free to tell them to set their expectations low, as you can only somewhat predict how it will go and how you'll feel afterward. You may think you will feel up for hospital visitors, and end up having an unexpected breastfeeding issue (or any number of things that may come up) that may make scheduling visitors too stressful. Kindly tell your people to expect to hear from you when you're ready, and that that may not be until you're home.
Keep in mind that you must protect your immediate family time and not rush it to make others happy. If you do end up having hospital visitors, let them know ahead of time that you prefer a short visit so you can rest. If you feel uncomfortable asking in the moment for a visit to wrap up, have a designated family member be prepared to speak up for you after your previously decided upon time. "Thank you so much for visiting us. I think we are going to attempt to take a family nap/rest." is a great example of something to say.
Once You are Home-
Have someone else do all of your texting /Q&A/ Meal Support, etc. You've got yourself trying to recover and your baby to worry about. That's plenty!
Limit visitors to as few per day as possible. Maybe you can only handle one a day, or even one every other day. Once you are feeding and changing around the clock, the hours will fly by and you may not have much bandwidth left to talk to people. On the flip side of that, avoiding isolation is key, so if you can't handle visitors yet, consider FaceTiming someone daily to brighten your day a little.
Don't get yourself ready or your house ready for visitors any more than you have the energy to. I know this will vary from person to person as far as their comfort level is concerned. If you are feeling okay with the state of your hair and face, let that be enough. You being in comfy clothes or even pjs is a non-verbal cue that you are not set up for a dinner party, and visitors should keep their visit brief.
If you want, have a list of tasks that need to be done posted somewhere. A well-meaning visitor might actually love to be useful in the form of doing a load of dishes for you. Another idea is to have a load of laundry with your detergent, that they can take home and drop back off when it is done. There is so much more people can do besides just holding your baby, and by the way, it is completely up to you whether or not you are comfortable with that.
On that note, this is a time where you may find out that most people in your circle are for you, but some just aren't. This visit should not be about them. If you haven't really had much to do with them before you had your baby, do not feel pressured to say yes when they ask to visit. This time is so sacred. Protect and honor it as much as you can!
Know that visits don't have to all happen in the first two weeks. You will need help for a long time to come! After the first two weeks, people start getting back to their lives, and that's where the real work sets in for you. Consider spacing out visits for up to the first 6 weeks.
With that in mind, feel free to not have visitors the first two weeks if you aren't ready. Meals can be left at the door as well as laundry and supplies. Your people should be there for you, not just for your baby! If you don't have awesome people, this is where a postpartum doula can be SO much help!
I'll leave you with this bit of encouragement. If there was ever a time in your life that you're allowed to just ask for what you need and not be sorry, THIS IS IT! You can be nice and still express your wants and needs. You've just been through one of the biggest days of your life and you deserve so much love and support. Wishing you the courage to be bold and a healthy and safe recovery.
Love,
Nikki
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