Visitors in the Hospital after Birth? Reasons It’s OK to Say “No,” and Why

Why would anyone want to turn away visitors in the hospital after the baby is born? Isn’t it one of life’s most joyous moments?

I will tell you: Literally the last thing I wanted when I gave birth was to have visitors in the hospital.

I was in my hospital bed, with my tiny newborn in a clear hospital bassinet nearby and my husband Dan was trying to nap on a very uncomfortable double-seater “couch,” if you could call it that, in our postpartum room. I was tired, exhausted, sort of confused and kind of disillusioned, too.

I knew enough going into the entire “birth experience” that I was 99% sure I did not want visitors in the hospital. And in the hours after giving birth, I was 1000% sure I did not want a single visitor visiting us, despite how much everyone wanted to meet our baby.

In this guide, I will tell you why it’s totally OK to not want any visitors at the hospital after giving birth. I hope you’ll feel less alone in going this societally “less traditional” route of the post-birth experience as a new mom.

Here’s why it is fine to not have visitors at the hospital after your labor and delivery.

Giving birth is not like it is in the movies

Nope, it really is not. Every time someone gives birth in the movies, it’s over pretty quickly, it’s exciting, everyone seems full of energy and the parents are delighted to meet their brand new little baby (who is also a tiny little actor).

In “real life,” birth may have complications that are far from glamorous, and usually, no birth goes off without any type of issue, from stalling in labor progressing, to the baby coming out and needing some special attention for a concern. I learned all this in my online birth class, and I still was not prepared!

In the movies, everyone’s celebrating, and friends bring flowers, and the birthing mother is so appreciative and in love with her newborn. Everyone’s glowing. In real life, you may be whisked off to a postpartum recovery room, realize your legs are still numb from the epidural and be ravenous if you haven’t eaten in more than a day.

Consider if you’d want visitors after all this goes down. I didn’t. I was so glad we talked about it in our list of questions to ask before the baby arrives.

You will be very, very tired

Despite my labor being relatively short and our baby’s birth being relatively uneventful despite some hitches here and there, I was tired. This was the beginning of a journey of figuring out how to get sleep with a newborn. In the beginning, you just don’t.

By Saturday when our baby was born, I had not slept since Thursday night. I had not been in my own bed since Friday morning. My world had been turned upside down because there was a tiny hours-old baby just a few feet away from us and she was ours.

I was very tired, having missed an entire night of sleep. The last time I did that was when I hiked a volcano in Panama for a sunrise view, when I was 24 years old, which was a decade before. It was a very different reason to lose a night of sleep, and this time, there was a newborn.

I found out that when I am tired, I get cranky. And I promise you: I was excruciatingly tired, and didn’t quite understand that I’d be extremely tired for the next three months. I was sleeping in increments of one (yes, one) hour, in order to feed the baby and have my vitals checked every 3-4 hours by nurses. And that does not count when the baby would cry, or when I wanted to eat a meal that got delivered.

I had no patience for visitors and you might not, either.

You may be recovering from major surgery (C-section)

My first birth was pretty by-the-book, and I did not deliver via C-section, but I have plenty of family members and friends who did.

A C-section is a major event and leads to a tougher recovery than a vaginal birth (so I applaud all the C-section mamas - you are strong!). There are risks for infection and blood clots, and discomfort and soreness at the point of the incision. You can read all about C-section recovery at Medical News Today to get the full picture.

As a C-section is a full-on operation, you might be bedridden or very sore and tense in your abdomen and core area. It could be tough to move around (giving birth makes any person sore and uncomfortable). It might be helpful to have visitors come and bring you food, but only if you are ready for dealing with visitors after a strenuous operation like a Caesarean.

You may be pretty uncomfortable

“Uncomfortable” is an understatement, especially if it is your first time giving birth and you were not sure what to expect. I sure was not, and my expectations were completely inaccurate.

You may be sore. You may really dread going to the bathroom. You may have a little trouble with walking. You also might not be comfortable lying down. So, is there even a way to be comfortable in a hospital bed?

With all this discomfort, I wanted to wait it out (alone) and only see visitors when I was more “with it.” And that took a while! But it was not happening for me at the hospital.

You may feel pretty darn gross

I felt gross after giving birth. I did not feel lovely. I did not want to put on makeup and do a photoshoot, and I did not want to put on a cute outfit and take pictures like the moms I see online and on Pinterest. I did not feel my best. I couldn’t even bring myself to shower because I was so tired (I know! And I love showers!).

And because of that, I did not want visitors. I wanted to just have my husband in the room, while we dealt with our tiny newborn who were were trying to figure out.

You’ll be feeding the baby every 2 hours

This was something no one told me about giving birth: not only are you recovering from the birth (however it went for you), but you have to feed the baby every 2 hours (or even more frequently). This goes for a bunch of the first few weeks of a newborn’s life, but applies in the hospital, where it was matter-of-factly explained to me, much to my shock.

On top of not having slept all of Friday night into Saturday, I couldn’t sleep more than 90 minutes at a time (often much less) for both days I was in the hospital. When I was awake, I was either eating food, feeding the baby. And during the night, we set an alarm for every 2 hours so that we could be up taking care of the baby, despite how exhausted we were.

I’ll just say that amid all of this, I did not want visitors in my hospital room.

Your partner may be tired, too

It turned out that after we left the hospital, Dan realized that the couch/futon he had been sleeping on for 2.5 days actually had a way to turn it into more of a bed. Unfortunately, none of the 10 nurses who visited us in those 48 recovery hours thought to tell us. And that’s fine: it is what it is.

Because of this though, Dan slept awfully (as did I). He wasn’t feeding the baby, but he was up with me when I was, because I didn’t want to wake up alone every two hours. Everything was new.

He was also just as tense as I was: we didn’t want to miss a second of grabbing our baby if she started crying, and we had to figure out what to do, together.

So in addition to my extreme exhaustion, Dan was tired, too. I had him on board with saying “no” to visitors.

You might be really hormonal

Depending on how your birth went, or depending on how you were as a pregnant and now postpartum woman, you might be hormonal.

That is totally normal. As you know by now, no two pregnancies, births nor babies are the same. In fact, even two pregnancies, births and babies from the same parents can be night and day.

So, you might be really hormonal, and that goes for having extra emotions, or no emotions at all, or just being really confused. Giving birth to a baby, however you may have done it (with painkillers, with no painkillers, with a long labor, a short labor, with complications or with no complications) is tiring, anxiety-inducing, worrisome and like nothing you’ve ever done before.

So, it’s OK to want some space from any extra visitors.

You might want to keep things simple

I wanted to keep things as simple as possible. I wanted to rest, sleep, text my friends, take photos of my newborn and eat and drink. I mainly wanted to sleep, and kind of eat. I’m telling you: I did not want a fancy newborn and mommy photoshoot, I did not want champagne, I did not want to FaceTime my family, nothing. I wanted to get my energy back, figure out how I was going to survive the first few days of motherhood and not much more.

The thought of having visitors added stress and too many variables to this mix. I didn’t want to deal with anyone aside from my husband, the baby and the stream of nurses coming in and out to check my vitals.

How to tell people you don’t want visitors in the hospital

For me, it really just came down to some hints from family that they wanted to visit, and me, as well as Dan, saying we were too tied up and tired to consider that.

In the weeks after our child’s birth, yes: we had some visitors. It was mostly family. I would recommend prioritizing visits from family who will help you do stuff around the house, like cook, clean and do laundry. If you have family coming who is not prepared to do those things for you, delay.

As for friends, I had some friends offer to bring me a latte, or a delivery of baby products from Target. These were the best. I was so happy I almost cried. They didn’t stay long, or they just dropped things at our apartment door.

All in all, the hospital stay is only two days, and I’m not sure why people think it’s thrilling to visit a hospital: it’s not. For seeing the baby, visiting me at home was much preferred, especially when I gave the green light.