The First Rule Of New Mom-Visiting: Bring Pizza
This weekend, we’re planning on visiting a couple of friends who live in San Francisco to meet their new baby, and it got me thinking about how different “visiting” is when a very newly hatched person is in residence. Visiting with a second baby is a whole different story, because second-time parents are much less panicky about whether the baby’s head will stay on its body when they pick it up and are likely to be really, really excited when someone offers to hold their child for so a second so they can do something other than holding their child, but visiting with a first-timer?
It’s tricky. Because there is a LOT of emotion and a LOT of exhaustion going on, and different people deal with emotion and exhaustion in very different ways, so it can be hard to know what, exactly, you’re walking into when you go visit a new mom. She may want a break from staring at the baby, or she may really want you to leave as quickly as possible so she can get back to doing what she wants to do (staring at the baby). She may want to show off her newborn, but she may not be in the mood to get partially naked in front of a crowd and not have any idea how that breastfeeding cover works yet. She may be straightforward with you about all this…or she may just act really, really weird.
It isn’t that new mothers want to make anyone feel unwelcome in their homes, or that they want to completely abandon the concept of politesse; it’s that they cannot help bursting into tears every thirty seconds and also may not be wearing pants.
As an example of this tendency of new mothers to behave in ways that their guests maybe aren’t accustomed to: A couple of days after I gave birth to Indy, my brother-in-law came to visit. He loves kids and is super sweet and helpful, and he arrived bearing gifts and immediately gathered up Indy into his arms and told me to relax and take a break. This is obviously very, very nice. But five minutes later, I was pacing around in my bedroom in circles, in a state of near-hysteria because he kept insisting that I sit down and relax and let him hold the baby for a second except I NEEDED MY CHILD BACK AND NOW PLEASE.
So I ended up charging back into the living room, holding out my arms, and saying GIVE. ME. THE BABY.
Which is rude.
I didn’t want to be rude. Just like I’m sure he didn’t want to make me feel panicky. Things like this just happen when you’re dealing with sleep deprivation and hormone levels hovering up there in the stratosphere.
So. Here are my rules for visiting a new mom friend:
1. Let Your Host Set The Plan. Instead of “how about I swing by after work?”, ask your friend when would be a good time to visit, plan to show up at precisely the time you said you would – and then try to be understanding if she changes the plans at the last minute, or even straight-up cancels. While this is not normally especially acceptable friend behavior, the reality is that she may have thought she was able to handle company, and then all of a sudden the baby threw up on her and the dog peed on the rug and where is her bra. You get the idea.
2. Bring Food. Oh, please bring food. Preferably food that doesn’t require anything in the way of assembly or preparation or plates. Like pizza! (I think the more acceptable wisdom here is to bring new parents healthy, homemade meals to break up the takeout that makes up the bulk of their diet during those early weeks, but whatever: I say bring pizza. Pizza makes everything better.)
3. Don’t Leave A Mess. You know how, when you go to someone’s house, the general expectation is that they take care of you – offer you things, clean up after you, et cetera? When a newborn is there, that gets reversed. If the mother is holding the baby, offer to grab her a glass of water. If you use a glass or a plate, wash it or put it in the dishwasher. Maybe even try to leave the place a little neater than it was when you found it. The very nicest thing a guest can do in those first few weeks after a baby arrives is to make the new parent’s life easier in these small – but meaningful – ways.
4. Lower Those Expectations. We generally expect things of people whom we’re taking the time out of our busy lives to visit them: things like saying hello, offering a drink, and being something approximating “polite.” You don’t get those things when you visit new parents. It’s not because they’ve suddenly transformed into entitled jerks; it’s because the screaming raisin that just arrived in their house is taking up ten thousand percent of their attention span. They want to focus on your story about your new boss; they just can’t. Because of the screaming. Try to be cool about it; they’ll snap out of it soon, promise.
5. Get In, And Then Get Out. This is not the time to hang around in someone’s living room for hours on end; the point of visiting new parents is to see the baby, and see if they need any help. Have you brought over food? Have you complimented them on the adorableness of their offspring? Have you sat and watched them try (and fail) to focus on a conversation with you for twenty minutes? Great. Leave. This isn’t because they don’t want you there; it’s because a disaster involving bodily fluids (either the baby’s or the mother’s) is always three seconds away when a newborn is involved, and…well, they probably don’t want you there. Bodily fluid disasters are bad enough when they happen in total privacy; having them happen in front of other people is just a whole other level of miserable.
In sum: Be sensitive, be speedy, and bring a (really) large pizza.
