Last updated on September 30th, 2021 at 10:13 am
A fan of Twiniversity asks…
“I’m curious to see how parents of twins feel about extended family and friends visiting in the hospital after twins are delivered. There’s an article floating around Facebook right now saying people shouldn’t visit until the mother comes home, but I am curious about how most twin parents feel about this issue. Would they agree because with two babies they will be exhausted and potentially trying to nurse all the time? If the babies go to the NICU, would parents welcome visitors or discourage them?”
We asked our Twiniversity moms and dads what their opinions are on this issue. Here’s what they had to say!
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-We allowed visitors and looking back I wish we hadn’t. Our boys ate every two hours and they didn’t latch right away so it was a long process of trying to feed each one and then pumping. And there was always someone visiting, so it was stressful to either go through the feeding process in front of them or to figure out a polite way to ask them to leave. I wish we had significantly limited visitors so that stress wasn’t there.
-We allowed visitors but if I had it to do again, I wouldn’t. I nursed our girls… they ate every 2-3 hours and it took about 1 1/2 hrs to feed them. We tried to have people time their visits around my nursing but most times it didn’t work out like that. Plus when they weren’t eating all I wanted to do is sleep. It added more stress to the stress we already had.
-My twins were my 2nd pregnancy. We had so many come with my first that I put down some rules for the twins. We wanted hospital visitors. But not the first day. We had a c-section scheduled for 8 in the morning and we asked that no one come until the following day. And that included our mothers. The only exception was that my husband went home and brought in our daughter to meet her brothers and spend some time with us (I missed that girl more than I imagined I would, so her being there helped me relax a bit.) The next day was nice. I was able to get up and walk and I didn’t have a catheter in. And I’d taken a shower. Don’t be afraid to tell people no. They’ll respect your wishes. This is not the time to please everyone else.
-Mine were in NICU but there was restricted visiting due to virus outbreak and the twins were in seperate rooms. It was a hard and lonely few months splitting myself in two and I would have loved anyone being able to visit.
-I had my entire family waiting in the recovery room including in-laws, parents, and siblings. It was nice to have so much support and excitement for such a neat event in our family. It did get a bit awkward when I was nursing for the first time since modesty was pretty much impossible at that point, but all in all it was more nice than awkward.
-We didn’t mind hospital visitors. We have a lot of friends and family so it was nice to have some at the hospital and some at home. Only thing is I get overwhelmed quickly and don’t realize it so thank goodness for my mother in law because she knew when it was time to tell everyone to go home.
-I didn’t want visitors. We let immediate family come by, but I really wasn’t feeling up to talking or entertaining after c-section and my babies were in the NICU.
-We just had my parents, my siblings, my in-laws and my two best friends visit. They came at different times throughout our stay and didn’t stay long. It was great and not too overwhelming.
-I didn’t want anyone crashing at my house — at least there’s a level of control at the hospital, since there are always nurses coming in to check this or that, so there’s always a ‘ok time to go!’ break. At home, people are usually too oblivious and excited by the babies to leave
-I had a c-section with my twins and was in the hospital for 5 days! I LOVED having hospital visitors. I can understand why you wouldn’t want visitors, especially during cold and flu season. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer to this, comes down to preferences.
-I was really particular as to who I wanted around me while I was in labor. That list didn’t include many people! LOL! My twins came 7 weeks early so we spent time in the NICU. I didn’t mind close family and friends visiting but sometimes it became too much. I also was pumping all of the time and it was really awkward with certain people around and then they wouldn’t respect my wishes of privacy.
-I will say we had more visitors than we could count when we had our twins and we felt very special and loved, but when we had our singleton we didn’t allow but very few visitors and honestly it was a better experience that way. You don’t have to worry about when you breastfeed, and kicking people out, or making your babies wait. You get to know your baby and start a routine and get some rest, which is necessary. To each their own, but we certainly appreciated the time more with few visitors.
