'AITA for refusing to leave my daughter in my OB waiting room while I have an appointment?'

"AITA for refusing to leave my daughter in my OB waiting room while I have a double appointment?"

No-Brother-5120 writes:

Hi! For context, I am 40 years old and I live with my husband and our 9 year old daughter. We have one vehicle. I had two OB appointments scheduled for today. The first was at 2:45 for my annual exam, directly followed by my first mammogram at 3:30. I was a bit nervous. Last week we had agreed that my husband would use PTO to get our daughter off the bus at 3:15 while I was at the appointments alone.

Today, when we got up to get her ready for school, he told me he would rather not take the PTO and told me to bring our 9 year old to my appointment and leave her in the waiting room until I was done.

I immediately refused, not only because it sounded completely unreasonable to leave a 9 year old in a waiting room alone for an hour and a half, but also because I am pretty sure that is not allowed.

In the end, I had to reschedule my appointments because he kept saying it was not a big deal to leave her in the waiting room. He ended up storming out of the house upset with me for being overbearing, paranoid, and overprotective.

His justification for why this would have been acceptable is that when he and his sister were kids in Philadelphia, he would sometimes wait in waiting rooms alone while his parents had appointments. But this is not 1990 and I am not his mom. Am I an awful person for not bringing my daughter with me?

OP provided a small update the same day.

I have called and confirmed she is not allowed into my appointment or allowed to be left alone in the waiting room because she is under 12 years old. Office rules. For folks asking why I did not make an appointment in the morning, sometimes if you do not want to wait two full months for an appointment, you take what they offer you, even if it is 2:45 pm.

Here's what people had to say to OP:

Cotton_Andy02 says:

So he wanted her to miss the last third of the school day to wait in a cold, boring, waiting room, surrounded by strangers, for an hour and a half? All because he didn't want to be a dad? He'd even get paid for it (paid time off) What the hell is his problem?

Kealanine says:

NTA. I’m baffled by the commenters who feel that your child should somehow be perfectly comfortable and safe sitting in a waiting room alone for well over an hour, that the office staff should be perfectly happy to be responsible for her, or that OP should use her vagina as a learning experience for her child.

Skinny_Ranger says:

I’m just so sick and tired of women not getting the support they need, OB appointments are horrible, invasive, I always leave my appointments in pain, then to have another painful appointment, mammogram hurt also, you don’t want to be a responsible parent after both appointments, you want to be the one that’s being cared for, your husband is selfish pig quite frankly.

madelynashton says:

NTA. Your husband is behaving strangely. Why did he wait until the day of the appointment to tell you he didn’t take the time off? Why did he throw a tantrum and leave? Does he act like this regularly?

What do you think?