There few things more touching than getting a tattoo of a loved one who's passed away. It can be a sweet and permanent reminder of those you hold closest to your heart, even if they're no longer with you. But one dad-to-be on Reddit was recently creeped out when his wife asked to get a tattoo of the baby she miscarried — but the baby was conceived with her ex.
The future pops admitted to being irked when his wife sprung the idea on him.
You see, he and his wife are expecting their first baby together in October, and the topic came up when they discussed honoring their future kiddo with some ink.
"Talking about it the other day, she said she wants to do names + birthdates," he wrote, before explaining that his wife said "she would put the name of the kid she previously miscarried and the date of the miscarriage above our child’s."
This made the poster wonder if it was strange to commemorate a miscarriage that happened six years ago — and with another man.
"I’m not trying to be the guy who's upset because his wife had a life before him, but I feel weird about her putting the name her and her ex gave the miscarried child on the same level as our child, in a tattoo," he explained. "I told her that and she got kind of mad and upset at me."
The soon-to-be dad added that although his wife thinks of her miscarriage "as much her child as ours," he doesn't see it that way.
"To me it’s different because that child never lived, and our kid won’t ever meet that kid," he wrote. "I don’t know if this is just because it’s not my child though, and I need to shut up and just accept it."
He added that he knows he has no right to stop her from getting the tattoo if she wants it, but that he also feels "it was okay for me ask her to reconsider."
Some people thought the writer was being incredibly insensitive.
"The miscarried child is a dead baby," one person wrote. "Her baby. She has every right to get the name inked onto her skin. How dare you say that a miscarried child doesn’t bear the same bond as the one that survived?"
And someone else thought he was acting out of jealousy. "Original Poster just doesn't want her to get the tattoo because the baby wasn't HIS. How insecure and selfish can he be?" the commenter added.
"I lost my last baby 26 years ago and I will never forget. To me it wasn’t a miscarriage, my baby died. You don’t forget, you learn to live with the loss. She was a mother before you met her, and to a mother all her babies are equally loved," a third commenter added.
Then again, some people thought he had a point ...
"Not to be an [expletive], but can you really call the baby firstborn, when it was miscarried??" one person asks. "Birth literally means to start life."
"Putting any type of priority on a dead fetus or newborn when you have a living child is going to [expletive] up the kid that's alive," another person added. "I honestly think it's a little bit weird to get a tattoo and birthday of a dead fetus and prioritize that over your first BORN child. Lol. But what the [expletive] do I know?!"
"Miscarriages are extremely common and most miscarriages happen in the first 12 weeks," another chimed in. "It takes some serious mental gymnastics to label those miscarriages as dead babies."
"I totally get grieving a loss, but when it starts to effect people in your life that isn't a good thing," said another.
This certainly isn't an easy topic to navigate, so it's no wonder even the comments come loaded with some heavy emotions. But one thing's for sure: These soon-to-be parents definitely need to talk out their differences before their baby arrives, and come to an understanding on the matter. That may mean the husband needs to come around to realizing that what his wife went through — even if it was six years ago — was traumatic.
Everyone grieves differently, and honors the losses in a way that makes sense for that person, even if that doesn't always make sense to others.
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