Managing Visitors and your Newborn (plus a FREE printable for managing visitors!)

It all starts from a good place: friends and family calling and texting you, inviting themselves over to your home, and cuddling your newborn. They love you, they are excited for you, and who doesn’t want to hold a newborn?? However, as a new parent, and as a person that just gave birth, you are allowed to set the rules and expectations for these visits.

You DO NOT Need To Be The Hostest With The Mostest

We had a client tell us about a friend of hers who was three days postpartum, and was standing in the kitchen cooking lunch for a house full of people. When this woman realized what was happening, she started crying because she was the person who needed to recovery!

It needs to be conveyed to visitors that yes, you love them, yes, you appreciate them, yes, you are excited to see them, but no this is not a normal visit. You just had a baby! You are not expected to recovery from birth, bond with you your baby, feed your baby, and provide cute Pinterest appetizers at each meal.

Setting Rules for Visitors

During our postpartum planning appointments, we ask our clients how they envision their postpartum recovery to feel. Some of these questions include: what are you expectations for visitors? Where will visitors sleep? How long will each visit last? These questions provide our clients with not only a general idea of how many people may be in their home at once, but also allows them to gain the confidence to be able to tell others these opinions.

Be Honest With Yourself and Your Partner

Thinking your wishes and vocalizing your wishes are two separate things. When you are thinking your wishes, you are less concerned that you are hurting someone’s feelings. However, as soon as you verbalize those wishes, you risk hurting feelings of those around. Due to this, it is important to be very honest with yourself and your partner. This honesty will allow you really talk about your fears and anxieties about having people you are less than comfortable with in your home when you are sore, tired, and learning about how to be a parent. Once you have you established how both you and partner feel about visitors, you can present a unified front when talking to visitors.

Practical Tips for Having Visitors in Your Home:

Visitors are for support not to be entertained while at your home by you or your partner
Having a discussion prior to arrival about expectations of their visit when staying both at your home and outside of your home can be beneficial
Have a white board on the fridge of tasks you need help with or do not like to do and let visitors pick one they would like to help
Make one room or area off limits to maintain your privacy
Remember visitors do not know you or your baby’s routine. You are allowed to excuse yourself as much as needed if you do not feel up to having someone in your home and simply say “the baby needs me in his/her room”
Use our handy table now for managing when visits will occur, what expectations you have for each visit, and where all these people will sleep, so that when the baby arrives, you have less worry.

Let us know if you would like to schedule a postpartum planning consult by contacting us today!