People don't always know the right things to say in the moments we need them most. Others are just merely incapable of reading a freaking room. That was certainly the lesson one woman on Reddit recently learned, when her husband would not stop complaining about a toothache … while she was in labor. (Oof!) The ticked-off mom immediately called her husband out for it, but he's apparently refused to see the error of his ways. So now, they've taken their problem to Reddit, where they're asking strangers to decide: Who's right, and who's wrong, wrong, wrong?
Although the whole incident happened two years ago, it's clearly still a contentious point of debate for the couple.
As the husband tells it, he had no warning he was going to have tooth pain on the day his wife went into labor, and explains in his post that he had "started developing an intermittent toothache" over the past couple of months.
When his wife suddenly went into labor, it took them by surprise because she wasn't due for another three weeks.
"About two or three hours into the 19-hour labor, I probably ate something delicious," he wrote in his post. And after his "delicious" snack, his tooth "started hurting in an ungodly way." The husband explained that at that point, his wife's contractions were far apart and "she was in very little discomfort."
(AHEM — according to him!)
But in the next few hours, "the toothache became a competing topic of conversation with the imminent birth of our first child," the husband continued.
"I didn’t want to leave her side to look for medicine until her parents arrived," he claimed. And once they did, he says he went down to the hospital convenience store and picked up some oral numbing medication.
"That, with a couple Excedrin, was able to alleviate the pain just as my wife’s contractions started to pick up," he added.
It might not surprise you to know that his wife tells the story a little differently.
In her version of events, the woman's husband had been complaining "for months and months" about a toothache during her pregnancy.
"It kept getting worse, and every time he’d complain I’d say he should go to the dentist, but he refused," she wrote.
Then, her labor started and once again, the there were those toothache complaints.
"For a few hours while I was in the hospital getting ready to push a child out of my body he continued to complain frequently about his toothache," she says.
She admitted that at that point, she actually wasn't in terrible pain. But STILL. After a while, that can get pretty annoying.
She isn't totally heartless, though — and she admits that she did feel bad her husband was uncomfortable.
But here's the thing: She says she had asked "multiple times" for him to get it checked out. So hearing him whine right there in the middle of labor? "There were other things at the moment I felt I should be focusing on," she says.
The complaining also "dominated the conversation for probably a couple hours," she added.
Most people on Reddit were shocked that this was even up for debate. In their minds, this dad had been a total dud.
"YTA, because you refuse to get it treated," one commenter wrote. "At some point you should stop expecting sympathy, because you don’t deserve it."
And another person deftly pointed out that these problems were not equal.
"For his pain: Orajel and Excedrin," they wrote. "For her pain: an epidural or morphine."
"Fancy whining about tooth pain when your wife is going to go into labor especially when they've had the pain for months on end," another person wrote. "I bet someone in that room just wanted to give him a swift kick when he mentioned his precious tooth pain."
But at least a few people thought the wife needed to be more understanding about the whole thing.
"He should not have brought it up and you should have been more understanding," one person argued. "Therefore you are both [expletives], but when you take into account that he got over it and helped you through your labor, plus the fact that you let him rant about it, it removes any [expletive], which means, No one is an [expletive] in this situation."
"A toothache is something very minute that people often put off dealing with," a second person commented. "People put off going to the dentist the most out of all other types of doctors. The reason why his tooth starting aching terribly more is because the husband was also under stress. No matter how easy the birth may be, it is stressful for both the husband and the wife."
"As someone who has both pushed a human out of their vagina AND had a manageable toothache suddenly amp to 1000%, I can say while it was not the most ideal time, tooth problems can go from 'oh this is bothersome' to 'oh dear god' before your unprepared [expletive] would even think it’s possible," one woman wrote.
Hmm … while I'm not sure any of this settled the score between them, the parents did comment later on in the thread that they are happily expecting their second child together in September, which is why the debate from their first pregnancy is still on their minds. They also shared that the husband later learned he needed a root canal (so I guess the pain wasn't so minor).
One thing's for sure: Dad better not be a repeat offender for the birth of Baby No. 2, and get a dental check-up, STAT.
These stories are based on posts found on Reddit. Reddit is a user-generated social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where registered members submit content to the site and can up- or down-vote the content. The accuracy and authenticity of each story cannot be confirmed by our staff.
