"I think this is totally a know-your-audience kind of thing. When I had my babies, because they were c-sections, I was in the hospital for about 4 days. I was thrilled to have visitors after the first day, and in fact, my best friend was even there while I was in labor and I was glad to have her as a distraction - at least part of the time."
I totally agree with this! The same thing happened to me. Visting hours would come and go and I'd be like, "People come visit!" But when I got home, the adjustment and the increased getting out of bed for midnight feedings and care and post surgery issues took a toll and I really did not want visitors.
However, I explained this to my husband that I preferred to have visitiors in the hospital rather than coming to our house in the week or 2 after and he completely disagrees with me.
Then tell him he's in charge of providing hospitality for them, which includes entertaining them if you need to tend to baby, nurse him/her, or take a nap.
When DD was born, I had no drugs and felt absolutely fine the next day. (She was born after visiting hours, so none that night.) Other than feeding and changing the baby, I had no responsibilities or chores that needed attention. I had fancy new nightclothes and did my hair and put on make-up each day and waited for the visitors. Most of whom did not come until I came home.
About two hours after we returned from the hospital, the visitors started arriving and the last left about ten that night. At some point I sent DH out for Chinese food. Then we were up most of the night with a baby who did not deal well with the change in scenery.
It was like that for the next month or so. In addition to taking care of DD, I had laundry to do and housework to take care of because I didn't want to appear to be a bad housekeeper. No one brought as much as a coffee cake. For the first week, DH was home and could do a bakery run but then after that I was baking almost daily. People came at lunch time, and I dipped into the supply of meals I had prepared and frozen to carry us through the first weeks. Forget doing my hair and putting on make-up; I considered myself ahead of the game if I had a shower in the morning.
But I was young and stupid and felt very fortunate that so many people loved us and wanted to see our new little one.
I would have much preferred hospital visits that required little to no effort on my part. However, I do have to say that, even with the almost constant stream of visitors, we had no trouble bonding as a family.
I think that the OP is one of the saddest things I have ever read.
AFA newspaper announcements go, when DD was born, the hospital sent the list of births to the newspapers; I still have hers in her baby book. I doubt that many larger hospitals care to spend employees' time to do this today, and since it's not a big profit center, most newspapers here don't print them any longer. The only ones I've seen do this in the past few years are the little local or free papers that want space-fillers.
