After going through all the work of picking out a baby name, it can be a major bummer when someone close to you lets it slip that they don’t like it. Just ask one woman on Reddit, who’s had enough of her sister-in-law’s teasing about her baby name pick and is ready to blow. “Like girl. Who makes fun of a BABY’S name?” she wrote.
It’s not like this is the first time that her SIL’s teasing has gotten under her skin.
As the Original Poster explained in a post on Reddit's r/babybump forum, her SIL has pretty much been a pain since she first got pregnant.
“My SIL seems to really enjoy digging at me about my pregnancy,” she wrote. “It’s dumb I want gender neutral clothes so I can use them for future babies, it’s stupid I did a a gender reveal, it’s ridiculous I didn’t combine my gender reveal with a baby shower.”
But now her SIL is making fun of her baby name, and it’s really made the expecting mom fume.
She told the OP “it’s stupid how ‘basic white women’ (her favorite way to describe me) care about their baby’s name before the kid is born,” she wrote.
Later in the thread, the OP wrote that her SIL considered her style to be “Goth Romance” — whatever that means.
“I know it’s most likely because she is jealous or something. All these comments have been unprompted as I try to avoid talking about my pregnancy with her," she continued.
“The mama bear instinct is strong but I’m not going to give this chick the satisfaction of a tussle,” she added. “She’ll simply not be allowed to babysit if she’s gonna be so disrespectful.”
The response was pretty much unanimous: The OP needs to stand up for herself.
"I like calling it out," one commenter advised, "just look at her in the eyes and say 'wow that was rude.' People get so flustered when you call them out directly lol."
"I like the slight variation to this that I saw somewhere on Reddit not too long ago… 'wow! That must be so embarrassing for you to say out loud!' Or 'wow, did you mean to say that out loud? That must be so embarrassing for you!'" another commenter suggested.
A third commenter had an ahem stronger reaction to the OP's story.
"Your SIL can, respectfully, eat a bag of d—s," the person wrote, adding this:
"'Care to much about the name before they're born' lol ok guess I'll just ignore and not be excited for one of the most life changing things that can possibly happen to a person. No Contact her ass or everytime she says dumb things, call her out. So sorry you have to deal with that, she sounds awful to be around! I'd make Significant Other deal with her, his side of the family is his problem."
Other people told her there's nothing wrong with being "basic."
"If someone calls me basic I own it lol," wrote one commenter. "I say yes I am basic and you bet your ass I'm going to be drinking a pumpkin spice latte on August 31st not giving a f— what you think."
"I feel like us basic women can't win. We're mocked for liking what we like. But if we step outside our comfort zone we're being fake," someone else chimed in. "All I can put it down to is that some people feel the need to put others down to make themselves look and feel better."
"I always say that the reason some things are called 'basic' is because they’re things EVERYONE likes," a third person wrote. "Pumpkin spice, yoga pants, messy buns, iced coffee, avocado toast, and woodblock quotes (and now baby name lol!)… they can pry them all out of my cold dead hands! Some people just can’t let others enjoy things."
Of course, the expecting mom's SIL only does these things when her husband isn't around — making it hard to nail her.
"She also waits until he’s out of the room to say things or she does it on the family group chat where everyone is," the OP wrote later. "We talked about it last night after I posted this and agreed [my husband] would be the one to call her out if she says something else to me. She tries to pass off what she says as jokes which makes it hard. She’s very passive aggressive."
But perhaps she's best off using one of the ideas that commenters suggested. Or as she put it, next time her SIL says something shady she can say: “Explain to me why you find this funny. I’m just curious.”
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