Huggies Series (Final Post): The Delivery Room: How Many People is Too Many People?

When we were making our birth plans for our first born, I said that I would be okay with family and friends being in the delivery room with me. In fact, I believed that people who wanted privacy with their partner during the birth were selfish jerks. Why wouldn’t you want the people who loved you the most to be there with you to share in the birth of your child?

I created a list of people I would call when it was time to head to the hospital for the birth of our child. This list was quite long and included immediate family, cousins, friends and some people from church. The second my water broke, I started calling people on the list to let them know we were on our way to the hospital.

Shortly after we arrived and I was admitted, the visitors started coming. My mom, my sister, my mother in law, my best friend, my cousin, people from our church. At first, it was great! There were people there to keep me company, to make me laugh, to give me advice!

But then, things got a little… not so great. The nurse informed us that only four people could be in the room at a time. Well, that caused a little bit of drama and the nurses started to get annoyed. Then, my contractions started to come faster and harder and well, I didn’t want to hear Church Lady telling me to “trust God” to give me an easy labor and I didn’t want my mother in law to tell me to “breathe” or to put her hands on my feet to rub them. I wanted peace, quiet and for everyone to get out of my room.

After my son was born and I had been placed in a recovery room, the nurses allowed my parents to come in to see me. That’s when I found out that all hell had broken loose in the waiting room. Apparently, everyone who was there waiting wanted to know if i had given birth to a girl or a boy, but the hospital staff refused to tell them, saying that it was the parents place to inform them of that information. And my mother in law didn’t like that answer and got bossy with the nurses, who then called security. NO LIE SERIOUSLY THAT ALL HAPPENED.

And so, the next time I found out I was pregnant, we decided that only parents and siblings would be notified ahead of time because never again. I finally understood why people wanted the experience to be a private one.

How do you feel about having friends and family present for the labor and birth of a baby?

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