The mum-to-be should be one of the very first people to discover her growing baby’s gender. Whether via a cheesy gender reveal party surprise, via ultrasound during the pregnancy, or at birth, the person with the child in their womb deserves to know first.
So when out of the blue phone calls started coming in from extended family members with congratulations on having a boy, one pregnant woman knew there was only one person to blame – her mother-in-law.
Sharing her devastating story on Reddit, the heartbroken young woman threatened to uninvite her husband’s mother and sister from the delivery room if they didn’t apologise for overstepping, and her husband may be kicked out too if he didn’t stand by her against his family.
The woman, who is seven months pregnant, explained that she had lost both of her parents to Covid, and, as an only child, welcomed the love and support of her husband’s family. She invited them to ultrasounds and baby shopping and even trusted her sister-in-law to host a gender reveal/baby shower.
But with just three days to go before the party, she started to receive messages from all of her husband’s relatives and close friends congratulating her on her baby being a boy.
“I went to ask what happened,” the woman wrote on Reddit’s Am I The Asshole board. “My SIL confessed that she let it slip to my MIL and she told everyone the sex of the baby after knowing, because she couldn’t hold it in.”
The party was soon cancelled due to everyone knowing the gender of the baby before his own mother.
“My husband started complaining that I was pushing them away because of a mistake that could happen and that I was being harsh,” she continued.
“Yesterday he brought it up and when I said that I still didn’t feel comfortable with them, he said, “Soon you’ll tell me that my mother won’t be able to go to the birth”.
“I think my face showed my response and he started saying I was being too hard on her because she was just excited and blabla.
“I had my limit and said, “If you keep pushing me, it won’t just be your mother who won’t be in my labor. So either stop or you won’t come in.”
Childbirth is not a spectator sport, nor is it a right to be in attendance. The lengths this mother-in-law went to steal her daughter-in-law’s special moment so callously deserves nothing less than an info diet until the child is at least three weeks old.
How extraordinarily cruel.
