AITA for banning my husband and father in law from the delivery room due to their intensely stressful/creepy behavior during my pregnancy?
There’s a famous Reddit post from 2020 where a pregnant woman wrote that her husband and father-in-law were a little too comfortable with their certainty that she was absolutely going to die in childbirth just like her husband’s late mother. It was to the point where her FIL was insisting that she go ahead and put all her clothes into storage, because she was obviously going to die in the hospital and it would save them the grief of packing up her things afterwards. Like. It was WILD.
When I tell my husband [that she feels suspicious of her FIL], he calls me paranoid, but I feel like my FIL WANTS me to die; his whole life identity for the past 35 years has been “amazing single dad” (never dated or had close friends or even hobbies really), and it seems like he’s looking forward to being able to guide my husband through what he went through. At this point, I’d honestly be happy to never see my FIL again, and I certainly don’t want him in the delivery room, especially since he told me he was “putting [his] foot down” about me not being “allowed” to have an epidural…. My husband, in addition to backing his dad on everything, acts like my due date is my death date, and has completely pulled away from me.
The commenters (and me, honestly) were convinced that the husband and FIL were either going to kill her outright to fulfill this expectation, or just make decisions about her care that might conveniently let her die.
And then she never posted again.
Over the last four years, people have frequently mentioned that post, always leading to a thread of people saying, “Oh god, I still worry about that woman.” I did too. It became one of those famous unresolved posts that people always wondered about.
Until yesterday, when someone on r/BestOfRedditorUpdates dug up a 2022 update she had posted on a different account:
TLDR; I had a beautiful and healthy baby girl, and I divorced my ex-husband. I lived, obviously.
She writes that she put her foot down about having her own mother in the delivery room rather than her FIL (!), and she WOULD be getting an epidural. Her husband lost his shit. And in his outburst, he let slip--
I admittedly lost my temper, and told him that I wasn’t going to die- it wasn’t my fault his father’s trauma wormed it’s way into his head, and that he needed to fix it without taking it out on me. He yelled at me that he didn’t need therapy. That caught me a little off guard; I asked him why he went to his therapist and was given advice about my death if he felt he didn’t need it. His expression gave it away, and he caved not long after.
It turns out there was no therapist. It was just his dad. During the times he was supposed to be at therapy, he was with his dad. I’m still fuming.
And that was when she got the fuck out.
I’ll wrap this up- I’ve got an adorable little toddler tugging at my leg atm. I’m alive, I’m happy, and I’ve got my baby in my arms. Life is good.
I truly never thought we'd see a resolution to this, and I feel like there's probably a good number of people who remember it, so I thought you might want to know.
ETA: Brilliantly, I put the link in at the top; here it is again for convenience.
