A young pregnant woman revealed how her family was torn apart after her ‘mama’s boy’ husband accused her of manipulating him into having a baby girl and left her.
The story began with Redditor u/BrilliantProud and her husband trying for a baby. While they initially had no success, both were genuinely overjoyed when she did get pregnant.
“He talked about wanting a son first so he could be the big strong leader for all his younger siblings and carry on the family name (a very big deal to him instilled by his parents). I expressed my desire to have a little girl I could dress up and match with,” she recounted, adding that it became “a playful banter.”
Fast forward to the day the couple found out the gender of the baby, and everything seemed hunky dory until the Redditor’s hubsand had a long call with his mother. The next day, the dad-to-be went AWOL and the world crashed around his helpless wife.
The embattled woman turned to the internet for advice in a Reddit thread titled “Am I the a-hole for ‘predetermining’ my baby’s sex?” on the website’s ‘Am I The A**hole’ forum. She recounted her story from day one.
She wrote: “Okay to start me (27F) and my husband (28M) have been married for 4 years. His parents (his mother specifically) and I have never had any problems, but we’ve never quite meshed or seen eye to eye. We’ve always got along and been civil. Our future family has been the talk for years. My husband will be the last of his siblings to have children, all of his siblings have at least one. It’s been a running joke in the family that if our first happens to be a girl she won’t be accepted because everyone else had a boy for a firstborn.
The joke has never sat quite right with me but I’ve laughed it off because I don’t want to start anything and maybe I’m just being sensitive.
Fast forward to a few months ago when we started trying. It took about 3 months for me to get pregnant, we tracked my cycle and had scheduled sex for the best chance. Infertility runs in my family and my hubby and I agreed on a big family so I’ve been worried about starting a family so late in the game. When I did get pregnant, we were overjoyed.
We had all the typical couple conversations that come with having a baby, the excitement, names, nursery themes, gender predictions, etc. He talked about wanting a son first so he could be the big strong leader for all his younger siblings and carry on the family name (a very big deal to him instilled by his parents). I expressed my desire to have a little girl I could dress up and match with. It became a playful banter. He’d refer to the baby as son, and I would call the baby our daughter.
The following week we went to our appointment and discovered that our baby was a girl!! We were both extremely excited. Hubby was disappointed to lose but told me he was overjoyed to be raising a daughter by my side. That night we called our families to share the news. After calling his family, his mother asked to speak to him privately. I went to bed alone as their conversation carried on for well over an hour.
The following morning, I woke up alone. There was a note on my husband’s nightstand explaining that someone would be by the house to pick up his belongings later this evening. I immediately tried to call him only to realize he had blocked my number.
I then tried his mom. His mother picked up on the first ring. Before I had the chance to get a word in she started chewing me out calling me a manipulative b***h. I asked her what I had done and she told me I’d ruined her son’s reputation with my inexcusable behaviors and tendencies. I let her finish her rant before kindly asking her what the f**k she was taking about.
She told me the divorce papers were already written up and I wouldn’t have the chance to tear apart the family like I had been intending to do all this time. I again, slightly less kindly this time, asked her what the f**k she was talking about. To which she told me my husband would be leaving me because our child is a girl.
I. Was. Gobsmacked. I explained to her that it takes two to tango and there’s no way to truly decide the gender of the baby, and if her or her son had a problem with the gender, it was his fault as it’s his chromosome that determines that.
But she smugly informed me my husband had already told her, and the position we used makes it 60% more likely to have a girl that way. She finished off by telling me that my clear preference for my family name was disgusting and she was glad to finally be rid of me and my manipulative ways before hanging up.”