A mother-to-be has said she never wanted to have a gender reveal party, but a family member allegedly forced her to do so, leading to dramatic and ongoing family conflict.
“I am pregnant with a baby boy due in November,” one woman wrote on social media over the weekend in a post that has garnered some 9,000 reactions and more than 1,200 comments to date.
“My fiancé and I didn’t really care about the gender of our child, so we didn’t make a big deal about it once we found out,” the woman said, sharing her story on the Reddit page known as AITA (“Am I the Asshole”).
“The only people we informed were our parents, their partners, and our siblings,” “ThrowawayGenReveal” wrote in his post.
However, she said, “before that, my dad’s girlfriend, who I had been dating for three years, had asked me if I was planning on having a gender reveal party. I always made it clear that I didn’t want one,” the woman added.
But “when I told them the sex of my son, she expressed disappointment that I hadn’t changed my mind about having a party,” she said.
The woman added: “I don’t like gender reveals. I never have and I never will. I prefer baby showers, which I think are more focused on the child themselves. I’ve never tried to hide that opinion either.”
A few days later, the woman continued: “My father’s girlfriend invited me to their apartment for tea (my father was away). When I arrived, about a dozen people came out of hiding to surprise me. There were pink and blue decorations everywhere, which gave me a clue as to what was going on.”
The mother-to-be said she “stood there in shock.”
“Then my dad’s girlfriend excitedly told me they were throwing me a surprise gender reveal party.”
The father’s girlfriend apparently “took it upon herself to order a cake with colored frosting, decorate the apartment and invite a group of people over,” the woman wrote.
She said of the surprise gender reveal party: “Among the guests were her mother (who I don’t get along with), some of her friends, my mother-in-law (not my mother) and four of my friends. As I later found out, my mother-in-law and friends had been informed that I had changed my mind about the gender reveal.”
But the woman said: “I didn’t do it.”
She added that as she stood in the doorway, “I looked at everyone and said, ‘It’s a boy. You can go home now.'”
And she left “without looking back,” she writes.
“A few hours later,” she says, “my father called me, furious that I had ruined the party. He told me that his girlfriend had put a lot of effort, money and love into organizing the party, and that I should have shown her respect and gratitude. Apparently, she hadn’t stopped crying since I left.”
The mom-to-be added in her post: “It’s been almost a week and they’re both still upset. Even after I explained that I never wanted this party, they insist I could have endured it for an hour, or at least cut the cake.”
So she asked others on the platform if she was wrong in what she did and in the way she still felt.
Fox News Digital has reached out to a psychologist for comment.
In the most upvoted Reddit comment about the situation — garnering about 11,000 votes — one writer said the mom-to-be was not wrong in her actions and emotions.
“That looks like him [the dad’s girlfriend] “She’s trying to ‘prove’ that she cares more about you than your mother, especially since your mother either wasn’t invited or declined the invitation to respect your wishes,” one person wrote.
“She doesn’t seem to understand how to prove that she cares about you. at all “It’s really about listening to what you want and what you don’t want,” the same person added.
Someone else said: “You’ve been very clear about your feelings about gender reveal parties. Your dad’s girlfriend has completely and deliberately ignored that and disrespected you.”
This commenter added: “I’m so sorry that the party she had planned for herself was ruined. Maybe she should have gone further and not even invited you, since this party was all about what she wanted.”
And another person, summing up the feelings of many others, wrote: “You set a boundary and walked away as soon as you saw it was broken.”
This person also noted, “If you had gone, it would have been used as ‘see, it wasn’t so bad’ or ‘why are you complaining about going to the party’ in the future whenever you tried to use that as an example of a boundary being crossed.”
