Most women will tell you that there's a lot that goes through their minds when they're preparing to give birth. Is the hospital bag all packed? Does my OB have a copy of my birth plan? LORD, please just let me give birth once my maternity leave kicks in. But here's what doesn't usually top the list of concerns: Will my partner stick around in the hours and days after my delivery, to make sure I'm okay and bond with our baby? And yet, that's exactly what one anonymous Reddit user says she experienced recently, after giving birth to her second child.
In her original post, the anonymous new mom describes feeling "betrayed" and in need of some input.
Her 38-year-old boyfriend, she explains, is usually quite supportive. In fact, she describes them as a "great team" that gets along well. However, the birth of their second child, a daughter, is still a sore point.
Still scarred from a traumatic first birth experience, the poster said she grew increasingly scared as her second delivery approached. So scared, in fact, that she actually voiced her concerns with her boyfriend and made him promise "not skip out on us" if she needed to have an extended stay or extra medical care.
"I told him he needs to stay with us through the first day or two after birth," she wrote in her post.
Some might argue, she shouldn't have even had to stipulate that in the first place, but soon after her daughter was delivered, the conversation proved prophetic.
The poster says she went into labor earlier than expected, and she wound up having an emergency C-section.
The timing wasn't the only part of the birth experience that was unplanned, though — she says that her partner had friends of his staying overnight at the time, which made things tricky.
Still, she wasn't expecting what happened next.
Just 30 minutes after the birth -- with the poster feeling sore and "like sh*t" from her C-section -- her boyfriend asked her if he could leave.
Now, to be fair, he's a farmer by trade, and he actually asked to leave so he could go feed the livestock.
But naturally, his girlfriend expected him to feed the livestock and come right back to her. Ya know, cause she just gave birth and everything.
But feeding the animals soon turned to running some errands, picking up groceries, and seeing his friends, and ... well, he didn't return for a while.
Meanwhile, the poster was feeling more than a little abandoned.
"My feelings were a roller coaster," she tells CafeMom, adding that her hormones were in overdrive, which certainly wasn't helping matters.
In fact, sitting in that hospital bed alone and in pain dug up some old childhood abandonment issues she's never quite recovered from. And hearing her recall them now is honestly pretty heartbreaking.
"There were moments in which I remembered all the times I had as a child when no one was there for me," she says. "When I was younger I always thought bad things happen to me because I deserve it and am unloveable. … When I got older, I had lost that kind of thinking. But back then in the hospital, all alone and in pain, it hit me again."
The boyfriend returned later that night, along with his friends who wanted to see the baby. But they stayed for 10 minutes before he left again!
She admits that he did tell her, "I have to go but just say the word and I will come back." But unfortunately, in that moment, she didn't speak up.
Later that night when her pain got worse, she left him a message that was more direct: "Please come. I feel horrible and need you," she says she told him.
But by then it was late, and he allegedly didn't hear it. An hour later, she called him. Then the hospital called him.
Still no answer.
"He was still asleep," the poster shared, but when he woke up the next morning, he apparently thought the missed calls were NBD and went to work.
Oof. Not the best move, buddy.
But get this: According to the poster, her boyfriend didn't call or message her, figuring that if there was an emergency, the hospital would have called again. So instead, he went to brunch with friends.
BRUNCH!
All told, the boyfriend barely spent an hour by her side within the first 48 hours of birth. And unsurprisingly, she was p*ssed about it.
In her Reddit post, she says the betrayal she felt keeps causing the couple to fight, even now that it's months after the birth.
"He usually brushes it off that he cannot change the past or it is my fault, as I should have called more often and used different wording in my message," she wrote. But ultimately, "he acknowledged it would have been better, if he had been there when things were critical."
She also shared that all he kept offering was excuses.
"[He told me] 'I am a man of my word and I would have been there for you,'" the poster wrote, "'BUT you could have called one more time/ wrote yet another message/shouldn't have allowed Friends to stay/etc.'"
It wasn't long before Redditors jumped in.
"I don't know what promise he had made but he obviously isn't a man of his word," wrote one user. "If he promised he would be there for you, then he needed to be 'there.' Blaming you for not calling him, which you did, is indefensible."
Another pointed out that she shouldn't have had to call or text more messages than she did for him to know that he was needed.
"You are in hospital after an emergency C-section with a newborn — his newborn — child," they wrote. "You already sent him a message, called him and had the hospital call him. At what threshold of messages and calls would he have suddenly gone, 'Oh maybe I should go in?' He needs to understand that he made promises to you that he failed to keep. End of."
Others reassured her that her feelings were valid and not to second-guess them.
"You are not silly for wanting to feel loved and cared for in all given circumstances," wrote one user. "Your BF is in a parallel reality or something."
"I would also point out that you need to advocate for yourself more," added another. "If you don't stand up for yourself, make your needs a priority, sometimes others wont either because its easy to take advantage of you."
(Aren't those words we all need to hear?)
In the end, the words of encouragement and advice from strangers seems to have worked.
Speaking with CafeMom, the poster shares that she has since sat down with her boyfriend to hash things out — and believe it or not, getting the Internet to weigh in on their relationship helped. A lot.
The couple talked for hours, she says, and "maybe even for the first time had a real and intense talk about our feelings." During that talk, they began to see things through each other's eyes, and ultimately, she got what she wanted: Her boyfriend to sincerely apologize and say that he finally sees why she felt the way she did.
So here's to happy Reddit thread endings, which don't seem to happen too much these days. And here's to every partner/spouse/significant other using this as a reminder that being present for your other half when she is delivering your child is the least you can do. So whether or not we ask you to stay there — stay.
The. End.
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