Siblings can have tricky relationships; one child may be perceived as the favorite who gets all the attention, whereas that child feels ignored. Take one woman online who said she believes her sister faked a pregnancy and announced the news in a group chat between her family only two weeks after her other sister's baby was stillborn. Now the woman is both confused and unsure how to address her sister's lie. Should she and her other sister confront their sister or just completely cut her off?
The drama started when the writer shared that her sister told her that she was six weeks pregnant.
As she wrote in a post on Mumsnet, the woman noted that she has two sisters, one of whom had a stillborn daughter at 38 weeks old. Two weeks after her sister lost her baby, her other sister announced that she was six weeks pregnant. "For the whole family, it was a very bittersweet time as you can imagine," the woman described. But the announcement did seem odd at the time.
Her newly pregnant sister was in a same-sex relationship and the writer wrote that she knew the sister's partner absolutely didn't want kids. But despite her reservations, both women tried to rally behind their sister.
Things started to get strange when her pregnant sister started to get boastful, never stopping to think how this would make their other sister feel.
The writer explained that her pregnant sister was so "tactless" in her glee at being pregnant, she called her on the phone to ask her to tone it down for their sister's sake. But her sister disregarded her warning and claimed that the writer was "jealous" of her incredible news.
The writer shared that things got downright weird when she accidentally ran into her sister's girlfriend, who seemed to have ZERO idea about a baby.
By chance, the writer happened to run into her sister's girlfriend on Saturday and was stunned when the woman seemed clueless that she had a baby on the way.
"I told [Girlfriend] that A had told us she was pregnant and GF confirmed this was categorically not true," she wrote. "They live together so I can’t imagine she’d not know."
Well, apparently, the girlfriend went home and asked her partner what was up because that sister then messaged the writer and told her to stop "sticking my nose in" their business. The damage, however, had been done: Both sisters now believed their sister was faking her pregnancy.
The writer explained later in the thread that her sister doesn't have a history of lying, but she does seek attention by "showing off/ acting out rather than lying (…) she likes to be the ‘extreme’ one."
"She claimed to have a bump from about 9 weeks, which is one of the things which peaked B into thinking it wasn’t true," the writer continued. "B showed very early (about 14 weeks)."
The writer explained that it was also suspicious no one in her family had seen a scan of the new baby. "The pregnancy has been all over group chats but no where on social media at all. Not unusual in itself but definitely unusual behavior for A as she shares everything on FB."
She continued, "A has no history of mental health issues but like I say, she can be quite extreme and has a hell of a temper so it’s possible there’s something underlying and the grief we’ve all felt has brought it out."
So now the writer has a decision: What should she do now that she knows the pregnancy was a fake?
"I haven’t yet responded to the Facebook rant and A during her rant hasn’t confirmed or denied that the pregnancy is fake," the writer continued in her original post. "I want to cut her off and not respond but B is keen to understand exactly what’s gone on and why. We haven’t fallen out over it, but we’ve had major disagreements on how to proceed."
Now the writer is wondering if she would be wrong to cut off her lying sister "and not engage with the crazy and encourage my sister to do the same," or should the sisters persevere and get to the bottom of what's going on.
"I’m 100% sure there is no pregnancy," she wrote.
Online people were positive that the writer should try and get to the bottom of this false pregnancy.
"I think you have to try and understand why she's done this," one person wrote. "No one pretends they are pregnant, especially in this kind of situation, unless something is wrong. It'll be hard, but your sister needs your support."
Someone else thought this was a cry for attention. "Wow. How awful for your sister. I can only assume that sister A was jealous of the attention B was getting, which is majorly (expletive) up," the person wrote. "Or at worse she was actively going out of her way to hurt your sister which is a whole other level of (expletive) up. I would confront her and get an explanation for the sanity of your family."
"I think you need to ask her out right — are you pregnant? Why didn't your girlfriend know? Why would you make this up? Keep it simple. I feel so sorry for your other sister, she must be devastated," wrote another person.
But some people argued she should just cut off her sister.
"I wouldn’t respond to her [sister] all, but I would be very concerned, this isn’t normal," wrote one person.
Someone else argued that by not engaging with her sister, she would be letting her know how she really feels. "I wouldn't respond in any way, or do anything. No response is a response, and a powerful one at that. A knows you know; what B does is up to her," the person commented.
"If you want to cut her off, cut her off," wrote someone else. "B can make her choice about how she will proceed.There no need for you to have major disagreements with B. Don't try and convince her of anything."
In the end, the writer said she believed her sister faked the pregnancy because she was jealous.
"We think her game plan was to fake a late miscarriage and then pull focus/ attention from B," the writer continued.
"We’re a very close family and B finds it helps to talk openly about [her baby] often, so we do follow her lead on that along with using her name," the writer explained. "Naturally whenever B wants to talk about [her baby] we engage fully which does take the focus of conversation especially with our parents when we all get together." The writer added that their mom even moved in with her sister after the stillbirth to help out.
Soon after her other sister announced her "pregnancy," the writer wrote that she would try and "duck out" of conversations about her other sister's stillborn. "I put this down to her feeling uncomfortable at first but now I genuinely think it was an (expletive) up kind of jealousy."
That is why the sisters agreed that they need to call their parents and tell them what's going on. "Mum will be devastated," she wrote.
