You may have many people in your life who are very excited to meet and love on your baby, or who want to support you after your birth. This is a great problem to have, right?

But maybe you feel overwhelmed, crowded, or smothered by it. Maybe some of the people who are eager to get into your postpartum space bring up feelings of discomfort or resistance: having them there just doesn't feel good in your body, even though they're very nice and/or related to you. Do they have a right to be there anyway?

Are you obligated to tell your parents the moment the baby comes out? Is it necessary to allow your in-laws to visit and "meet the baby" within 24 hours? Should you allow others to hold the baby that first week?

In this episode we explore the concerns and tensions that many mothers (and fathers) experience about how to include loved ones in the earliest days of their baby's lives, what it looks like to honor the critical time period of the first week of a baby's life when the mother and baby are a dyad, and how to lovingly and clearly set boundaries or establish expectations with both healthy and unhealthy people.

Mentioned in this Episode:

• • Nils Bergman's work on the importance of continuous skin-to-skin contact
  • Hearthmother Journey

  
  

Connect:

• Email us to say hi: ⁠[email protected]⁠

• Put in a request for future topics and/or submit a question for future Q&A episodes: ⁠Fill out the form⁠

• Apply to tell your birth story on the podcast: ⁠Holy Wild Birth Podcast : Guest Application⁠

• Hang out with us and other Holy Wild Women in our private community (off Facebook): ⁠Rooted in Eden PMA⁠

• Become a holy, wild birthkeeper with us inside ⁠Hearthmother Journey⁠

From Lauren:

• ⁠Instagram⁠

• Midwifery consults: Email  ⁠[email protected]⁠

From Brooke:

• ⁠Instagram⁠

• ⁠Trust God, Trust Birth Workshop⁠ - a 5-part high-level roadmap to a confident home birth (pay what you can)

• ⁠Faith-Filled Home Birth Workshop ⁠- a 3-part video series delivered to your inbox

• ⁠Embrace Birth Journey ⁠- comprehensive and holistic faith-based home birth preparation (courses + private community)

• ⁠Sister Birth: The Podcast⁠ - short, beautifully scripted episode to encourage your along the way

Intro and Outra Music Credit -Betty Dear By ⁠Blue Dot Sessions⁠ is licensed under a ⁠Creative Commons License⁠.