visitors after surgery
kimmyt09
member
I'm having a repeat c/s on August 17th. My first was unplanned after a failed induction, so my whole family was already at the hospital waiting for him to be born. My mom and sister were in my recovery room pretty quickly. Originally I had planned that my husband would bring my son in to meet his new baby brother in recovery, and then the family could start trickling in. Now I'm not sure. I was SO out of it last time. I really want time to do skin to skin and try to nurse before we're totally bombarded by family... and if they are there waiting, they're going to just stay for god knows how long. I feel like the baby will just be taken out of my arms and I won't get any time with him myself, let alone time to even rest.
Did anyone have family there right away, or do most people make everyone wait?
Re: visitors after surgery
It's absolutely a personal preference. If you'd prefer to have some alone time with your DH and both kids, do it. Do the skin-to-skin for a while before people come in.
We did have family almost immediately both times, but it's what we wanted. If we didn't want them in there, we would have asked them to wait. I got time to breastfeed and have our other kids meet the baby and then we had our parents and siblings.
Other family and friends came to visit either later that night or in the next two days while we were still in the hospital.
People visited us at home after a day or two and we had time to settle in.
Our families were not nearby at all (not even in the same country..) but, had they been, I would have wanted at least a couple of hours before having any visitors, no matter how my baby was born.
I would want lots of skin to skin and nursing, and time as a family before including anyone else.
DS born via unplanned C-section at 40w6d
Everyone was waiting when I got to my room from recovery after my c/s (which was unplanned). They brought in my son (he had to spend 2 hours in NICU since he was early & a GD baby, all was well).
And my husband made it VERY clear, no one was to touch him until I spent as much time with him as I wanted.
Set rules. You are the mommy, no one else. And I know my nurses are awesome & If I would have said, "I don't want anyone in the room when I get there." they would have forced everyone to the waiting room.
I felt comfortable with immediate family there right away but my family knew that if at anytime I felt uncomfortable with them there or was in a lot of pain and not up for visitors that I would ask them to leave and come back at a better time. They were prefectly fine with that.
I got a lot of skin to skin and nursing time in the recovery room so I was ok with family holding him once I got to my room. My parents brought in my daughter to the recovery room so she could see her brother right away.
Again, this was all fine with me because I felt really good. If I had felt crappy and out of it, I may have changed my mind. I would say see how you feel and let family know you may or may not need a lot of time to yourselves once you get to your room.
I had family visiting when I was in the recovery room, but that is also what I wanted. In addition, it was just my family since DH's lives halfway across the country, so I wasn't bombarded with a lot of people.
However, later on in the day, I did get overwhelmed with visitors. My mom decided to invite all of these people she knew and I was just exhausted and wanted to sleep. Looking back, I wish I would have just said the only visitors would be family. Everyone else will just have to wait. Next time, if there is one, we will limit the number of guests, but mostly I think my husband and I will have a code word for when I am done with visitors. He will know that means he needs to get everyone out so that I could rest.