When mom is in labor, she should be able to pick and choose who gets to be in the room with her — no matter how the rest of her family feels about it. But one mom's father-in-law completely overstepped boundaries and showed up uninvited to her delivery. And that was the nicest thing he did on the day her daughter was born…
The new mama explained that she had made it perfectly clear to her family that she only wanted her and her husband in the delivery room.
In a post on Reddit, the mom wrote that for the birth of her child five weeks ago, she told her family that she wanted it to be a private affair. "We had made it very clear early on that only [Dear Husband] and I would be in the delivery room and we would inform our families once baby was born and we were ready for visitors," she wrote. As a courtesy, her husband texted their parents to let them know that she had gone into labor at 4 a.m.
But her FIL didn't want to understand. He took the text to mean that he was *personally* invited to the birth.
No matter how much she and her husband explained to her FIL that he was not *needed* for her delivery, he somehow managed to show up at the hospital and make himself a nuisance.
First, he wouldn't let the poor mama get some sleep. "Just as I'm falling asleep who should walk in but FIL. Happily chatting like nothing is wrong, he just won't shut up," she recalled.
To make matters worse, her FIL tried to barge into the room after the delivery -- while mom was very much still "spread" and getting stitched up.
After finally getting a moment's break from her FIL, the mom delivered her baby after he went into the waiting room to watch TV.
"FIL hears (my daughter) crying and is standing just outside the curtain of my room and asks if he can come in and see her," the mom explained. "I was still spread and being stitched up and if he had walked in he would have seen a lot of me that he doesn't need to be seeing."
Luckily, her husband stopped him before FIL got a look at her goods!
The real pièce de résistance of this oblivious dad, however, was that he took his new grandchild from his daughter-in-law's arms before her husband had even had the chance to hold the baby.
"I don't have a [strong] spine and didn't say anything the whole time he was there but was fuming that he couldn't even allow us to have this time to ourselves," she wrote.
Online people were gobsmacked that this FIL could be so oblivious.
"I have such a hard time to wrap my head around this because who does this??" one person wrote in the comments. "I just had my first one a month ago, and I really feel bad for you. I cannot even imagine how much of an (expletive) move this is."
And another person was angry on the mom's behalf. "I’m so upset for you. I’d like to give old dad a tongue lashing for you, you both deserve someone on your side and listening to your wishes," the person wrote.
Someone else had one word to describe the FIL's behavior: entitled. "I’m so sorry that happened. It sounds like he just sees that as him being entitled to somehow?" the post said. "The only thing I can figure he’s thinking to come to that conclusion would be since he helped make DH he should therefore get credit or first views of any children from him? Regardless it’s so stupid and wrong. So (expletive) entitled and socially disconnected."
In the end, the mom wrote that if she had to do it all over she would have been more firm in her decision.
"We should have told a nurse not to let anyone in, but neither of us thought anyone would actually show up after the big deal we made about the rules we had set for the birth," she wrote later in the thread.
As she unfortunately learned the hard way, once mom was at the hospital and in labor "I couldn't move and was beyond exhausted and didn't have a fight in me."
Though she does resent that the "memories of the birth of my first child are tainted by [her father-in-law]," she added that she knows deep-down he isn't a bad guy, just "stubborn."
"I had hoped that by venting here I could get over that," she continued. "[Dear Husband] really wants a better relationship with his dad since they only see each other a few times a year and he wants [Dear Daughter] to have that too."
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