Woman Says Relatives Aren’t Clean Enough To Visit Her Newborn

A woman says it’s her right to choose which visitors can come to see her new born. But she doesn’t know how to tell her sister to stay away or the real reason why. What would you do?

Writing in to Reddit the woman explained that she was in the process of working out how things would look at home in terms of visitors coming to the house following the birth of her child. She says that she doesn’t want to exclude everyone but she does want to try and keep her sister and her husband away.

I (20F) am expecting my first born this new year with my (20M) boyfriend. I found out extremely late into the pregnancy that I was expecting, so late in fact that one week later I discovered I was already 5 months along. I’m 8 months pregnant later and have to start making decisions regarding my birth plan and post birth plans.

I should probably explain some certain things to be clear. My plan isn’t to shut out every visitor. My parents, his parents, both our grandparents and my little sister will be allowed to visit. His siblings who already have kids can visit depending on whether or not they have been recently sick, which is a condition I made clear to everyone and they all happily agreed.

This is regarding two people in particular, and while I do not like to exclude anyone, and never have, I have certain reservations about allowing some people around my son in his very early stages. Specifically my older sister and her long term boyfriend.

Don’t misunderstand please, I love my sister. Always have always will. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a rocky relationship at best. For example, when I told her about my pregnancy the first time, her answer was “what the f were you thinking?” And later on the phone when discussing that I would like to be left alone the first couple of days after my son’s birth she remarked that “it’s MY nephew and I want to see him.”

I have several concerns. Primarily, her sense of personal hygiene. For reference, every time I’ve seen her in person or over FaceTime in the last three or so years, she has been unclean and dishevelled. This may have some underlying meaning which I have tried to help her with many times but she always grows defensive and refuses to talk about it, and it makes me sad to think that maybe the reason is, she is too embarrassed to ask for help. That is for another post though. Her boyfriend who I barely interact with is also very bad with hygiene. At our cousin’s wedding last month, neither of them had showered and both were visibly dirty, hadn’t washed their clothes and he wore jeans.

And before you think she just has a problem with unwashed hair, the woman explains that it’s more to do with the fact her sister and BIL work with horses and she’s afraid what they might be bringing into her home.

Now I’m not unreasonable, I like to think. I can deal with someone not showering or brushing hair, it doesn’t bother me all that badly, it’s just that they work with horses on the regular and I am reluctant to expose my newborn to horse hair so early in life. It’s not in my plan for my son to be around farm animals for at least a few months after birth because I simply can’t predict how he would react to it. Considering how both my boyfriend and my mom are allergic, I don’t want to risk anything with him so early.

I have made broad statements to everyone regarding that clean, sanitized hands and clean clothes are needed when they will be interacting with my son but she has directly been asked to change into cleaner clothes before and simply refused.

I have presented my concerns to my mom and she responded with, “well he is her nephew and she will want to see him and might feel left out if you don’t let her come around.”

I don’t really know how to proceed. I feel like as the parents, my boyfriend and I should have final say in who is allowed to visit in the first couple weeks.

How do you think she should broach the subject without hurting her sister’s feelings?

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