Another who had her mom there.
At least the first time.
She was told she had a 25% chance of still being there for the birth part, but by then, if a busload of frat boys had been handy, I’d have invited them in, too. It was just too cool not to share. There were about a dozen people in the room when Gabe was born, as there was nobody else delivering at the time, and all the L&D nurses filed in to watch, plus a student nurse (who almost passed out), plus the midwife, the backup OB, the assigned nurse, two doulas (!), my husband, and my mom. Beyond that, I had echoes of my foremothers beside me at that point, visibly, all around the room in transparent sepia tones. Of course, we’re talking three days of labor with only 10 hours of sleep (in 2 hour increments) plus a day before the labor with only a nap, so hallucinating wasn’t out of the question. But heck, if they were there, anyone could be.
With the second, my mom was the companion to my first son, so she was supposed to be there. Only we got transferred to the hospital, the hospital didn’t allow kids, so she had to watch him at home. My first doula this time was my Hypnobirthing instructor (value beyond measure!), and my second doula was stuck helping my mom cope with being ‘dumped’ in the process of the change of care, and we had another friend who hadn’t ever seen a birth who got to stay (she’d come to visit, but never left), my midwife (also as a doula, as she had no privileges there), my husband, the nurse, and eventually (for the ‘important’ 10 minutes) the nit of an OB, who I could have done just fine without thank-you-very-much. Sigh.
The hospital policy dictates to some degree how many and whom. Ours had a limit of two… or was it three? - presumably spouse and friend/mom/sister/doula. In my case, we got away with the extra because the midwife didn’t have to sign in for an access bracelet, and they never told us to send our other friend home. So they stayed.
My little sister (half, different mom) didn’t even tell her mom that she was in labor until the kid(s) were born, because her mom has a habit of nosing in WAY too far for comfort. She was told, outright, that her mom would be there, because her ‘baby needed her’. Um, a little respect, please? If she’d backed off, perhaps she’d have had a chance to see ONE of her grandbabies born, but she didn’t learn her lesson. I don’t see her denial of access as selfish in the least. It was selfish of my step-mom to think that she had any right to the spot. It was the only appropriate choice in that situation, IMHO.
My mom considers it not a right, but a great gift to be offered the chance to see a daughter birth the next generation. I considered whether my MIL would be invited, but decided against it. Just personal, it didn’t feel comfortable, though I love her dearly.
Really, birth is about your process. Some people find it a very intimate and private affair, with bonding focussing on the smallest possible family unit. Others find it a larger-family affair, connecting generation to not just the generation above, but the one above that and above that, linking the flow of life all along the way. Or to their community, for that matter. None is wrong, as any method will allow you to achieve the same goals, in general, in the course of time. You WILL be bonded intimately with your child in ways nobody else is. And you will probably link up your generations, if they are worth linking, and promote development of a sense of community. Whether it feels appropriate to start at the larger circle, or the middle, or the smallest is entirely up to you.
Personally, there is no way I could not have had an intimate bonding process, even with a hundred people in the room. The universe stills when your child is born, like being in the center of a bell newly rung. Nothing else exists beyond that immediate process, the welcoming, the sound of their voice, the feel of them the first time you touch outside instead of in. I could not tell you what anyone else was doing at that moment, for either child. But I have locked forever in my memory the sound of my husband blowing his nose because he was crying, while I watched my first son’s face wash from purple to pink, and he opened his mouth to make his first, sweet, mellow, gentlemanly cry, hot and slippery on my stomach. And with Brendan, I can still feel the surprising heat of his foot against my leg as he rested a moment before being put on my belly, and the weight of my husband’s hand on him, on me, just before he peed all over me - and the jiggle of his head as I laughed. In neither memory are any of the others imminent, important, present as more than mere scenery. I can see them in my mind’s eye as fragments in my peripheral view, colors and shapes, but immaterial to the moment, even if some of them were instrumental in acheiving it.
As for the living with parents thing - I’d go for practical, if there aren’t other issues present. I lived with my mom for a while, off and on. When it made sense to do so, I did. I also paid rent and fed myself. It was an adult arrangement, IMHO, and that makes a difference - I wasn’t living on her dime, letting her do the figuring and the budgeting and so forth. But I also know people for whom it would not be an issue of independance to let their parents foot the bills, because of the particulars of their relationship - they’d accept it as gift, graciously offered, and meant kindly.
(or, in short, ‘what Avalonian said’)
