Establishing Boundaries with Family and Visitors after Baby
Having a baby is an exciting event for the whole family. In pre COVID times (and more and more lately), the birth of a baby can bring on a parade of family visitors. Some of these visitors may be helpful and some, not so much. I recommend thinking ahead of these visits about what sort of boundaries you will want to establish. Maybe this is not something you have ever thought about before. Maybe in the past, if there was a difficult family member, you might have chosen to not see that person. However, when a baby arrives, people often want to come visit and depending on the type of visitor, this can put a significant amount of strain on new parents.
I always say that there are the visitors who come for the baby and visitors who come for the parents. I am a very firm believer that anyone who comes to visit soon after your baby is born should come with the intention of taking care of the parents, not the baby. Your job as new parents is to learn who your baby is and to figure out how to care for your child. This means that your ability to care for yourself is very limited. In fact, in other cultures, there is a 40 day lying-in period where a mom spends this time in her bed with her baby and family comes to care for the mom, the home and any other children. That time is dedicated to the mother’s recovery and her focus is on caring for herself and her newborn. If you have the type of family who is helpful, it may be very easy to give directions about what you need and know that those needs will be met. If you do not have helpful family, it is a good idea to think about what sorts of boundaries you will need to protect yourself and your new family.
Here are some things to think about as it relates to boundaries with family:
Decide what is a reasonable period of time for family to stay. A weekend may feel like just the right amount of time, a week may be way too long. If your in laws will be coming and you have never really spent time with them without your partner before, consider whether your partner will be around or at work while they are visiting.
Where will they stay? Do you have room in your home to host visitors? If so, is it just enough space or will everyone be on top of one another? If you are breastfeeding, those early weeks can often be spent topless due to constant feeding taking place. Maybe your father in law milling around isn’t the best idea?
Decide who can come and when. It may be great to have your sister come and help but not your sister and her 3 small kids under age 5 along with her.
It is not your job to be a tour guide in your city and entertain family. This is less of an issue during COVID, but there have been many group sessions when moms have expressed frustration at schlepping around the city with their newborn, stressed about where to feed and change their baby while also worrying about the well being and entertainment of their family.
How is everyone going to be fed? Please repeat after me: In the early postpartum weeks, it is not you job to feed anyone else! Other people should be feeding you.
Think ahead of time about what will be helpful for those visitors to do. Some visitors may assume that you just want them to hold the baby. While this can be helpful if you want to take a nap, there are many other things around your home that are not getting done in these early weeks which might be a more valuable support. I often encourage parents to put up a list of the things that visitors can do so you can just direct them to the list. There are plenty of tasks that need to be done on a regular basis such as filling and emptying the dishwasher, starting the laundry, making sure it gets switched to the dryer (raise your hand if you have left wet clothes in the wash for days at a time 🙋♀️), folding laundry, taking out the garbage, washing pump parts and bottles (!!!). A great task for grandmas is sorting through all of the baby clothes that come as gifts and organizing them by size and season.
If you have a hard time setting boundaries with visitors, postpartum doulas are great with this. Sometimes having someone else who can run interference is incredibly useful. This is also helpful with family who thinks that they know everything about your baby (who they just met) and wants to tell you how to do everything. Having a postpartum doula present who is an outside expert can relieve some of the stress that comes from your mother in law telling you you are doing it all wrong.
While some of this guidance may seem less relevant in COVID times, it can still very much apply. While family may not be arriving on your doorstep as readily, they may be Facetiming multiple times a day expecting to see the baby or insisting on regular Zoom visits. It is absolutely important to share the joy of your new baby with family and friends, but the newborn weeks can be exhausting and you may not always be up for virtual entertaining. Be clear about when you can have these conversations or even how frequently you will be sharing baby photos. You aren’t exactly sitting around, eating Bon Bons with nothing else to do!
COVID boundaries
Lastly, COVID itself presents many instances were boundaries are necessary. Everyone has had to figure out what level of exposure they are comfortable with regarding COVID. Many moms in groups have felt that in order to feel that they and their new baby are safe from illness, they need to be very isolated. This may mean having some hard conversations with grandparents who want to visit but who aren’t willing or able to fully quarantine prior to travel. With vaccination, this may be less of an issue but even the decision for visitors to be vaccinated may present conflicts. If you are grappling with these decisions and are trying to figure out how to determine what feels safe, I highly recommend looking at the research that Emily Oster has done on this topic. Like any other issue that requires communication, I suggest being as open and honest in these conversations as possible so as to not to leave any blurred lines that can lead to greater conflict.