Youngest children all over the world know the pain of feeling like they always have to wear their older siblings' or cousins' castoffs and nothing new of their own. One woman on Reddit wants to know if it was really so wrong of her to refuse hand-me-downs for her baby? In the woman's eyes, as the last of her cousins to give birth, she’d be getting clothes nearly 13 years old and they might be in terrible condition. But now, her family is slamming her as “materialistic” for only wanting things that are new.
The 35-year-old future mom explained that she's about to have her first baby.
As the youngest of her cousins, this makes her the last in her family to have a baby and it's been a long time since the last birth.
“My cousins all had their kids ages ago,” she explained in a post on the Am I the A–hole forum. “The youngest of my cousins' kids was born when I was 22 years old. That was THIRTEEN years ago.”
Her husband is an only child with no cousins — so no old baby clothes there.
It’s not that the mom-to-be doesn’t understand that hand-me-downs are a “rite of passage” for most families.
“But with how old any hand-me-downs would have to be in this case and just how long they would have had to sit in God knows what conditions to come to me, I honestly don't want anything that isn't new,” she explained.
She did accept a wooden cradle from her husband’s family, “but that's different because it isn't fabric.”
“My family would only be giving away fabric hand-me-downs,” she wrote.
In fact, she distinctly remembers an incident that set her mind against hand-me-downs forever.
“My mother made baby blankets when I was a teenager, but after just five years of being stored in the attic, they were found covered in mold and mouse droppings and bugs,” she recalled. “I don't trust anything fabric that old. I would never feel like it was clean.”
Now it’s time for her baby shower, and she flat-out told her family members to keep their hand-me-downs to themselves.
"I put a request for no hand-me-downs in the invite to my baby shower because I wouldn't want them to give up something they valued for me to just throw it away," she wrote. "Because I 100% will be."
“Now I'm getting called greedy and materialistic, and accused of thinking I deserve better just because I waited so much longer than everyone else to have kids,” she explained.
She believed it’s a reasonable request because “too much time has passed" and she asked if she would be out of line “for requiring new things only if people are going to give gifts."
Some people thought the future mom had gotten things all wrong.
“[You're the A–hole]. Clothes that old if stored properly are fine,” one commenter wrote in. “We have clothes from when our now adult kids were little 20 years ago. They have been in storage bins the entire time. Those blankets weren't stored properly, so that's how they got moldy and mouse droppings on them.”
Another commenter agreed. “My mom stored my baby clothes since I was a kid and now they're being handed down to my cousin's kid. Sure, they were a tad dusty, but no bugs or mold. Sounds like your mom didn't store her blankets properly. Seriously, do you buy an entirely new wardrobe every few years or something?”
A third commenter put it this way: “A good wash, and most older things are plenty serviceable. Remember, OP is a first-time mom. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine that your child will be so disgusting (in terms of body fluids, stains, dirt) that you’ll be willing to accept any clothing that will stay on them and can be thrown in a hot washing machine after the inevitable mess. She’ll have it figured out by her second child.”
Some people, on the other hand, agreed that hand-me-downs are sort of gross.
“I wouldn't want stuff that old either for a newborn,” one commenter wrote.
“I understand your situation,” someone else chimed in. “With my first, I did not want hand me downs either. It took me awhile to conceive because of infertility. And as a first time parent, I wanted everything to be perfect for the baby, which in my mind — everything had to be new and “safe.” Psychologically for me, I wouldn’t know how clean the hand me downs were. And spiritually, whether any negativity was attached to it. I simply told my relatives that it was my first baby and as a first time parent, I just want everything new. The moms in the family understood.”
A third person took other commenters to task, writing, “I have to respectfully disagree with the consensus here, adding the future mom “doesn’t want hand-me-downs, she made it known, end of story. People don’t need to spend a ton of money on a gift. I’ve done baby showers where I’ve spent only about $20-75 (it depends on how close I am to the person — random coworker gets some cheap stuff from the registry, good friends get fancier stuff). The choice isn’t only between ‘thousand dollar baby carriage’ and ‘smelly baby items from the garage.’ [Not the A–hole].”
It seems like the mom-to-be has decided to stay firm with her decision.
Later in the thread, she wrote that she hopes her cousins have “thrown away their baby things already anyway so this is a moot point.”
“If this was a situation where my cousins and I were all having babies close together, this would be different,” she added. “I have no problem with a situation where it's going right on down the line, but I'm not dealing with things that have been shut up in closets for decades.”
Even if her position means gets no baby gifts, she seems completely unbothered. “I'm totally okay with buying things myself,” she wrote.
The way things are looking now, that might be the case.
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