Preparing for Post-Birth Visitors

Living on the opposite side of the country of your entire family really sucks when your pregnant with your first child.

For one, I'm not really getting a baby shower.  Whatevs though, I'm way over that.

What's really bugging me out is trying to plan for visitors after the baby is actually born.  As of right now, our list of visitors includes: my Mom, my Dad, Mama Simms (and perhaps her hubs), best friend from home Kim (not to be confused with Navy Wife Kim), and The Sailor's Aunt, Uncle and 2 cousins.  At this point, I'm not sure if either of my sisters plan on coming out and I don't believe anyone else from our extended families are planning a trip.  That is 5 separate groups of people who are going to come out to visit once The Sea Monkey is born.

Now, I love that I'm getting support from all these people, but honestly we're not going to want more then one "set" of visitors at once; having a newborn will be overwhelming enough as is.  So, I'm trying to plan out who will come when.

The biggest wrinkle in that is - you guessed it - my Mom.  I'm lucky that things between us are much better, she's even coming out to visit for a few days in November.  But, she wants to be here when the baby is born.  Well, you can't say with any level of certainty when a baby will actually be born.  So she was planning on using "emergency" time off through her work.  Well, now she isn't sure if she can use "emergency" time off, so she might have to plan a specific trip and just hope the baby is born during it.

Now she's telling me, oops, I was scheduled to work that weekend.  I don't know if that means she can't ask for it off or what, but it's just adding another obstacle.  Add to that the fact that she can't decide how long she wants to stay, and it's totally throwing off trying to schedule everyone else to come visit!

My Dad is much easier.  When he has the money, he'll come.  Easy freaking peasy.  I have a feeling once The Sea Monkey is actually born (or once we get a lot closer) he'll start looking at finances much closer and try to plan a trip.  But for now, I'm fine with "we'll figure it out later" because I know a) if I called him and something was wrong and I said I needed him here tomorrow, he'd figure out a way, and b) if he called and said "I wanna come next week" and I said "we already have 5 bazillion people at our house, can it be in two weeks?" he'd be cool with that to.  Seriously, my Dad's an easy customer.

Mama Simms is pretty flexible too, and she says she'll come whenever I tell her to.  But she doesn't want to be here when my Mom is - historically speaking, they don't exactly get along.  Add in the way my Mom treated me when I initially got here and Mama Simms really doesn't want to see my Mom.  Now, if only my Mom would make up her damn mind as to when/how long she's coming, I could give Mama Simms a more precise window of when she should plan to come.

Then there's Kim.  She wants to be here when the baby is born.  Or at the very least within a few days of the baby being born.  I suggested she waited until school was done (she's a teacher) and she freaked.  "THE BABY HAS GOT TO SEE MY FACE SOONER THAN THAT!" She doesn't care who else is there, as long as the baby is.  So I guess she's pretty easy too, I just wish I could give her a more precise time frame as to when the little sucker is going to make their grand entrance so she could start planning the trip now.  Because if she comes out here before the baby is born and I don't go into labor before she leaves, she might have a fit.  And try to force me into labor.  And refuse to leave.  And then lose her job for not coming back.  It just wouldn't be good.

And finally we have The Sailor's aunt, uncle, and two cousins.  They're pretty cool customers like Mama Simms; they just want me to tell them when to come.  Once again, this would be much easier to accomplish if my Mom would make up her damn mind.

The whole thing is just overwhelming.  I've started putting together calendars for April and May.  My next step is to start researching statistics for when baby's are actually born based off of their due dates and then try to convince my Mom to make real plans for when she's going to come out and go from there.

How did you handle making time for everyone on the planet after you gave birth?  Seriously - I need as much help as I can get!

Until next time...