- Pregnancy
- Baby & Toddler
- Parents
- Getting Pregnant
- Baby Names
- Product Reviews
-
Registry
- Community
-
More
Want a personalized experience?
Download the free app
May 2016 Moms
southerngirlgetsfit
member
Another post about pushy family members and labor
southerngirlgetsfit
member
I know this subject has been mentioned time and time again, but when I do a search, I don't find anything specific.
I always planned to not tell anyone other than my mom (and obviously husband) I was in labor. Originally we were going to tell his dad (who he's super close to), but when we found out we were pregnant and told him right away, he told EVERYONE despite us asking him to keep it a secret. After that, we agreed to just let him know once I was about to deliver, knowing he'd tell the whole world.
Well, a family friend of mine just had a baby last week and her grandpa (who is close friends with my grandpa) didn't find out about her delivering till 4 hours after the fact. She lost a lot of blood and it was touch and go for a while, so obviously, their concern was not, "let's call everyone and tell them the baby was born!" It was all about making sure she and baby were totally okay. I would've done the same thing. WELL, our grandfathers gossip like old women and my grandma tells my mom, in the most dramatic fashion, how obscene this is and how she cannot believe so and so didn't tell him the second she went into labor, etc.
We have mentioned casually how we don't want a big production at the hospital, our hospital's waiting room is VERY small, I don't want extra stress, etc. I guess we have to be more direct though. When my SIL was induced at midnight last year, all DH's sisters, aunts, grandparents, etc. were at the hospital by 6am. I refuse to let this happen. I wouldn't mind letting people know I am in labor but I have a feeling they just won't be able to help themselves. DH also has a family member who updates Facebook just about every hour, with things no one needs to know (ex: I got into a fight with my husband last night, he just doesn't get how hard I work and I'm sick of it!..etc) If I don't even want family members, friends knowing my status in labor, I surely don't want her random Facebook friends knowing. I also think my grandparents expect it to just be our small little happy family there once the baby is born and they'll be able to waltz right in and I'll be bright eyed and bushy tailed and they can hold and love on the baby for as long as they want. DH's immediate family is huge. I am already having anxiety about the possibility of a long and exhausting labor and delivery and having to lie there while 20+ people shuffle in and out loudly through our room as they please. It's also important to us to have uninterrupted time with just my husband and I and the baby. Grandparents are old school and don't see why we shouldn't just go straight from L&D to allowing them full access.
Anyway, my mom thinks I should mention our labor plans for Easter, since it'll just be my immediate family and I'll only have to say it once. DH is working away this week, so it'll just be me. My question is, what would you say? I don't want to hurt their feelings but I DO want my husband's and my wishes respected. Is there a way to do this and achieve both? Let me know what has worked for you!
I always planned to not tell anyone other than my mom (and obviously husband) I was in labor. Originally we were going to tell his dad (who he's super close to), but when we found out we were pregnant and told him right away, he told EVERYONE despite us asking him to keep it a secret. After that, we agreed to just let him know once I was about to deliver, knowing he'd tell the whole world.
Well, a family friend of mine just had a baby last week and her grandpa (who is close friends with my grandpa) didn't find out about her delivering till 4 hours after the fact. She lost a lot of blood and it was touch and go for a while, so obviously, their concern was not, "let's call everyone and tell them the baby was born!" It was all about making sure she and baby were totally okay. I would've done the same thing. WELL, our grandfathers gossip like old women and my grandma tells my mom, in the most dramatic fashion, how obscene this is and how she cannot believe so and so didn't tell him the second she went into labor, etc.
We have mentioned casually how we don't want a big production at the hospital, our hospital's waiting room is VERY small, I don't want extra stress, etc. I guess we have to be more direct though. When my SIL was induced at midnight last year, all DH's sisters, aunts, grandparents, etc. were at the hospital by 6am. I refuse to let this happen. I wouldn't mind letting people know I am in labor but I have a feeling they just won't be able to help themselves. DH also has a family member who updates Facebook just about every hour, with things no one needs to know (ex: I got into a fight with my husband last night, he just doesn't get how hard I work and I'm sick of it!..etc) If I don't even want family members, friends knowing my status in labor, I surely don't want her random Facebook friends knowing. I also think my grandparents expect it to just be our small little happy family there once the baby is born and they'll be able to waltz right in and I'll be bright eyed and bushy tailed and they can hold and love on the baby for as long as they want. DH's immediate family is huge. I am already having anxiety about the possibility of a long and exhausting labor and delivery and having to lie there while 20+ people shuffle in and out loudly through our room as they please. It's also important to us to have uninterrupted time with just my husband and I and the baby. Grandparents are old school and don't see why we shouldn't just go straight from L&D to allowing them full access.
Anyway, my mom thinks I should mention our labor plans for Easter, since it'll just be my immediate family and I'll only have to say it once. DH is working away this week, so it'll just be me. My question is, what would you say? I don't want to hurt their feelings but I DO want my husband's and my wishes respected. Is there a way to do this and achieve both? Let me know what has worked for you!
Re: Another post about pushy family members and labor
That's just my opinion. I will never understand why people feel it is their right to know when someone goes into labor, or it's their right to see the baby before the parents are ready for that. It. Is. Your. Baby.
I wouldn't feel obligated to let everyone know your plans. People are always going to offended no matter what you do. This is your moment so do what it is YOU feel most comfortable with.
Basically - if people are being thick, and you want to be nice - blame it on bad technology, faulty memory and the hospital policies.
I wouldn't say anything...it's your birth , your choice. If they want to gossip about trivial things, let them be aware how drite they are being. The other grandpa should be happy his granddaughter is OK!
I never understood why people have to be the first one there. The baby is not going to remember!
I feel like their way is the mature way to react to news involving someone's labor wishes and baby.
Then after the fact you can just play dumb and say things like, "Sorry, once the baby started coming out, rational thinking and any plans I'd made were very quickly forgotten - didn't mean to leave you out but baby was hogging all my attention" and "I honestly didn't think anyone would be happy sitting around waiting for me to go through labor for hours and hours, so glad you get to be here now at a later time in a much more reasonable setting!" This probably won't even be playing dumb, I'm guessing these things will be true anyway. Good luck!
That said, my parents, husbands parents, and three of our friends camped out on the other side of the freaking door. Silly me I thought they'd stay down the hall in the waiting room, especially while I was screaming.
If you don't want people there, do not tell them you're in labor until it's over. "Sorry, I was a little busy hahaha" done. You do not have to justify anything further than that.
The short version of my story is as follows: We made it clear to family and friends that we didn't want people camped out in the waiting room, but would let our parents know when we went into labor (religious family, they like to keep things in prayer), then would let people know when they would be able to visit after LO arrived.
Fast forward, I go into preterm labor, DH's ENTIRE family gets the call from MIL and everyone is in the waiting room. For hours. MIL had to be cut off because she kept having security CALL OUR LABOR ROOM for updates. We had to to tell them we were no longer accepting calls. DS was born quickly, but I suffered a severe hemorrhage and almost died, twice, during the whole thing. Eventually, the doctors cleared DH to run out to the waiting room for no more than 5 minutes, tell everyone baby and I were ok, and that we would let them know when they could visit the next day. (I hadn't even been moved to recovery yet).
MIL and FIL decided this was a personal affront against them, that they had "a right!" to see the baby, and MIL made a big deal about how we were being selfish and preventing her from holding HER grandchild. SHe said DH coming to the waiting room was pointless because he didn't stay and they weren't allowed back to see the baby. Nevermind that I had not yet had a chance to hold my son yet because of everything that happened. Yeah.
Moral of the story, you can tell them your wishes (which you have) but they will disregard it anyway. You can tell them it will cause you added stress, they will make it about themselves anyway. You can nearly die, they will still be offended that their wants weren't considered.
You CAN however, tell the hospital staff that you want absolutely no visitors until you say otherwise. Or, do as PP mentioned and "forget" to tell anyone or blame technology. Do whatever you have to do to be ok. People have a tendency to make your body and your baby somehow their property in these situations. Don't put them above what's best for you or LO.
Long story short is that DH is going to have a sit down convo with us and his immediate family to just go over ground rules (even though we already have...) so everyone has been told. No one will be waiting in the waiting room, no one will be in the room with us, and we probably won't let anyone see her until we get moved to mother baby (our hospital also recommends the first 2 hours with just mom, dad, and baby for skin-to-skin and breastfeeding, etc).
I've stressed a lot about this but have gotten to the point of IDGAF if I piss anyone off. This is OUR baby, as in DH and I, not anyone else. We will be newly meeting her just like everyone else so I'd rather get my time in before someone else tries to take that from me. We all have forever with her, but she's mine and I would like to stare at her uninterrupted with the man who helped create her
my mom and I talked a lot about what I wanted in the labor room. She reminded me over and over that I was probably going to be naked, and while I wouldn't care in the moment, I might care after that my MIL saw my boobs.
When I did get a little flack from family about not wanting anyone else in the birth center, I told them about how having people other than your DH even in the building can slow down or stop labor and they might be waiting for hours and wouldn't they be more comfortable waiting at home until everything's fine and were able to tell them LO is here and everyone's okay? That shut a lot of people up.
FTM, so like PP's, no experience to go off of. However, you have no obligation to explain your reasoning for your choices during labor. Personally, I think Easter would be a bad time to talk about it. Enjoy the holiday, because the family members might start a fight over your decision and if your DH isn't there, it might be hard to handle. I'm sorry you have to deal with this!
What are your hospital policies? My doctor said it's a 2 person limit, she will personally body block family who attempts to try to get back to the room (not that we have to worry about that), so maybe having a talk with your doctor would be a good idea to see how they would approach the situation?
I say let Easter be Easter and don't tell the people who are pushy or blab other people's info when it's time.
Don't talk about it with any of them. Don't give them a heads up to start formulate plans for your baby and your birth. Or to give them room to think they have a say or argue with you, etc.(we got a lot of push back and bulldozing for trying to justify, defend, argue, or explain and people did what they wanted anyway)
Decide between you and your DH and register private. Do not tell until you are ready for visitors.
I say this from my past experience. People were passing my baby around until baby's temp dropped. I missed skin to skin and nursing for far too long because of pass the baby (plus I was too medicated to advocate for myself and baby at that time and kick everyone out).
The nurses at my hospital were busy taking care of babies and moms, not being a baby bouncer to the "family baby party".
Even when I put up a sign to please let baby and mom rest or something along those lines because it was really overwhelming, people came in freely anyway during my entire hospital stay.
There is more to this story but my next story will go like this: registering private, not telling anyone what room or what time, and enjoying the time with my new baby as much as possible.
We hired a doula to help advocate this for us in case of any problems.
I essentially asked that people don't wait in the waiting room, as I was told no visitors in OR recovery and I'd be there 12 hours. I told them wait for my hubby to call with ok to visit.
In that same email, I also asked that we did not have visitors AT HOME until we were ready. (We have a few people who like to pop in unexpectedly)
Of course...my MIL misread the whole thing. She read don't come to the hospital OR our house until we said so.
Moral of my story- you can say whatever you want ahead of time, but it may be misread, misunderstood, etc. I did regret the email because it caused some tension that wasn't needed. Ultimately, people did respect our plan even though they didn't want to.
With my first, I personally told MIL and my aunt (who acts like she is my mother sometimes) that I didn't want anyone in the room except my DH until the baby was born. I had this very clear explanation that because I am an introvert, having people around stresses me out and that can make labor more difficult. They both said they were disappointed but understood. But then they drove to the hospital together six hours after I was induced and camped out IN MY ROOM through the whole thing. My contractions were too painful for me to speak up for hours until I got an epidural and DH didn't say anything but I was pissed the whole time because they both knew and completely ignored my request. This time, MIL will be keeping DS so she won't come until the baby is born and I think that without that peer influence, my aunt will do better at respecting my wishes.
So I just dealt with this with my MIL & SIL. Both of our families live in the same town as us but my family is huge and every has babies every 2 seconds so they are being very cool and laid back about our wishes for privacy. My MIL & SIL are not so understanding since this is the first baby in their family and I get that everyone is excited. DH and I have gone back and forth about how we want to handle the fact that his mom and sister definitely want to be there for the birth and come over constantly after baby is born.
Our solution is that we are no longer delivering baby at the hospital we originally told everyone including his mom and sister we would be delivering at. For other reasons outside of this situation we are delivering at a birth center down the street from the hospital and we are not going to tell anyone so the word cannot get out unless we need to in case of an emergency.
Other dilemma was whether we should make this more clear to MIL & SIL other than our casual talking about how we want privacy during birth with them. This was NOT good enough for them! The other day my MIL said to DH, "you're going to call me when she goes into labor right?" He responds, "No we actually aren't going to tell anyone because we want this to be a private time for us and respected by others." She still did not get it. I had to speak with her about it at another time and give her all our reasons for why we are choosing to do things this way.
Reasons:
- We are really hoping to achieve a natural labor and the best way to do that is to have as little distractions as possible (no people, coming in and out, calling, texting and stressing us out)
- This is my first baby and I've never pushed anything out of me like this so I would like privacy so I can try and be as comfortable as possible. Not comfortable being naked, vomiting etc in front of loves ones no matter how close we are
- This time is very important to me and DH and we want to have it alone to ourselves to bond with baby.
We even took things further and explained to her that we want at least 2 weeks alone after birth so I can recover and we can have the bonding time we desire. No family or friends will be coming over until we let them know when visitors are welcome.Saying all these things to my MIL has seemed to help with the situation. She is the kind of person that if we did not make things clear ahead of time, she would make her biggest effort to be there and act like she didn't know what our wishes were. I've also heard others experiences going badly by not being clear with friends and family before hand and people taking advantage of that. At the very least, if after talking to people about your wishes and they still choose to disregard them then you will have more justified reasons for kicking them out/being upset with them when they sabotage your birth!
Good luck and hope you find this helpful.
You could also always just say that your labor went very quickly and there was no time to call
If my family were known for not following my wishes I would have no hesitation keeping the L&D updates to myself until I was ready to share.
With my first pregnancy, I told our family from the get-go that we want at least an hour with the baby alone after she is born. We kept them up to date via texts, but that was it. They all decided to come to the hospital before she was born and guess what, they waited and waited and waited.
And I will second what some pp's said about your nurse. Don't be afraid to use them as the bad guy! Our nurse told us they would kick out anyone that we wanted to!
I will never understand why family members assume/insist that they have front row seats to something so intimate as a birth.
Your body, your baby, your labor & delivery. Nobody's business but yours & who you want to know
My mother is the same way. She raised us to NEVER impose. She doesn't like to impose either. This isn't going to be her first grandchild (my brother has two girls), but with the first two girls, she waited until she got the okay because she didn't want to stress out my sister in law and she wanted her to bond with the baby first.
My siblings do not live here so they wont be around. I don't anticipate trouble..
your baby. Your rules.
So those of you who have invasive family to deal with, remind them that their behavior is NOT the norm, and NOT helpful, and there are lots of ways that they can be extremely helpful and connected with the baby. But those helpful scenarios are not usually in the delivery room or in your house as a guest for the week after labor!
Example: My mom and a friend's mom are throwing me a baby shower and we're inviting my close girlfriends and a few of mom's friends, and my MIL. MIL keeps complaining that she doesn't want to have a ton of people crash this shower, but she really doesn't want all of her relatives/neighbors (people my mom/friend's mom don't know at all) to feel excluded since they're excited too but not invited. After saying this like twenty times, finally my husband just yelled at her, "If you don't want people to feel excluded, then STOP telling everyone about the shower!" It was pretty great. And now she's throwing a separate shower and inviting all those people. So like I said, can be very frustrating, but it is possible to get through to her, and then she's nothing but supportive.