There are few things that feel as supportive and timeless as to bring a new mom food after she has a baby. Women have been doing this for one another for literally centuries, and it is such a tangible way to help take care of someone who is in the middle of recovering from childbirth and dealing with the shell-shocked exhaustion that comes from having a newborn. For those of us who are blessed to have people bring us food postpartum, we can probably still remember our favorite meals and how comforting they were.
So, when a woman recently wrote in the AITA forum on Reddit to ask if she was the jerk after getting food and body shamed by her family members for adding toppings to a salad, we were pissed on her behalf.
The original poster had her first baby just two months ago and is, like many breastfeeding mothers, feeling hungry much of the time, especially since she sometimes misses meals while caring for her baby. She should have been feeling loved and cared for when her sister-in-law offered to bring her lunch, but that is so not how it went down and we are fired up about it. Let's get into it and see what Reddit has to say about hungry moms.
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OP's sister-in-law has been warning her about gaining weight.
According to OP, she "gave birth two months ago, and everyone says I should be eating less because I'm not eating for two anymore, but I'm actually hungrier now than I was before."
This makes total sense! A lot of us are hungrier after childbirth because of the increased need for calories to support breastfeeding and because there isn't a baby squishing our stomach anymore, which can make it hard to eat at the end of pregnancy. Unfortunately, OP seems to have a family that feels like talking about other people's bodies and weight is an OK thing to do. We recoiled when we read OP's next sentence: "My SiL said she was also really hungry after giving birth, but says it's your body tricking you and you have to ignore it. She said to be careful, because I'm much shorter than she is and will gain weight faster."
NOT COOL, SIL, not cool at all.
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Her SIL offered to bring over some food.
When her SIL brought over lunch for everyone, it was a salad. OK. That's fine. We love a salad and it can be a tasty lunch. But the salad was a skimpy one, according to OP, having only veggies and a low-fat dressing. No protein. No meat, no cheese. A salad of sadness, really.
So, OP did what any normal hungry person would do. She added some extra toppings, including some boiled eggs and cheese. This, apparently, was what made her SIL claim she was ruining the lunch and making it "into a fatty one and defeated the point of her bringing food over for me." SIL even pointed out that OP's husband, who is "taller and more muscular than me" ate the salad as is.
OK, this is so rude on so many levels! Food shaming, body shaming, and telling someone what to do in their own home. Nope. We're not here for it at all.
OP's husband sided with his sister.
OP explained that she was hungry and needed more to fill her up, but her SIL got upset and left. OP's husband (who is also on our jerk list at the moment) had the nerve to side with his sister, saying that OP should have "just eaten the salad as it was and eaten a snack afterwards so as not to hurt her feelings."
And maybe SIL should have brought a breastfeeding mother a lunch that had more than 200 calories in it! Honestly it is probably good that Reddit profiles are anonymous because we'd be sorely tempted to send OP a pizza and a bucket of chicken right now.
Food shaming is never OK.
Reddit doesn't always have the best reputation when it comes to some of the comments on the site, but this time they were right on the mark. Everyone agreed that OP is totally not the a–hole in this situation and that SIL is "body shaming a new mother" which "is some next level a–holeishness."
Many women chimed in to remind OP that, actually she is still eating for two as a nursing mom and that being hungry is a sign that she needs to eat! Beyond that, as one member of the forum pointed out, "Two months after giving birth your body is also still healing from the trauma of giving birth, and likely still replacing some nutrients. Healing takes energy, and humans get energy from food."
Furthermore, OP's weight is nobody's business and her husband needs to step up and tell his sister not to come back unless she is carrying a lasagna and an apology on her lips!
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