A new mom-to-be recently confessed to Reddit that she feels like her husband and stepdaughter are putting her in an impossible position when it comes to naming their child. On the forum, the mom explained that her husband is a widower who lost his wife and unborn child during labor. Even though he is in counseling and she acknowledges that he is still grieving and “as healed as he can be,” the two have been building a life together and are expecting a baby girl.
The mom believed things were going well, but her perspective shifted once she learned what her husband and stepdaughter wanted to choose for the baby’s middle name.
Aitah for not wanting my baby to have a middle name connected to my husband’s late wife and baby?
byu/Plastic_Armadillo119 inAITAH
“My husband suggested Annie (fake name) and his daughter agreed,” she wrote. “It took a while to click in, but I realized who that name belonged to. I didn’t disagree in front of my stepdaughter because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but then they tried to make the second middle name the name of their late baby.”
The mom left the room, and when her husband followed and asked what was wrong, she told him directly that she was uncomfortable with the name choice.
“He got mad and said that these are the names he wants for our kid and that my stepdaughter also wants them too, and they have meaning behind them—that these names are important to them,” she explained in her post. “I kinda blew up at him and told him that I didn’t care and that I didn’t want my kid to have those names.”
After spending a week at her sister’s, she tried to have a civil conversation with him. She revealed that her hesitancy about the names was deeply rooted in the fact that his family and friends consistently compare her to his late wife “whether it’s my cooking, looks, how I take care of his daughter, and even my pregnancy,” she wrote. “I explained that I don’t want my kid to have the same name as the woman I’m always compared to.”
He still didn’t “get it” and insisted the names were too important to let go of. The mom turned to the Reddit community to ask if she was wrong for objecting, especially because others in her life said she was.
“Babies aren’t memorials for someone else. The kid deserves to see their own name as theirs, not a headstone for someone they never met,” one follower wrote.
“I would have this conversation in front of a therapist. This isn’t just a name. This is telling a new baby that they will never be the baby you lost and you aren’t over it,” suggested another Redditor. “This is not allowing a new baby to be themselves—to make them carry the burden of your grief every day of their life. They never get to be themselves; they have to be a legacy, a lost future. This ‘doesn’t have meaning’—it is cruel. He can’t erase his pain by making a new baby carry it.”
Hopefully, the couple can continue healing and come to a fair decision for their little girl.
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