'AITA to still feel hurt about something that happened after I gave birth?'

"AITA to still feeling hurt about something that happened after I gave birth?"

Last year I gave birth around Christmas. It was an emergency C-section, so I stayed in the hospital for a few days before being discharged. On the way home, my husband said he needed to stop at the supermarket to pick up a few groceries. I stayed in the car with our newborn because I was still in pain and barely mobile.

He came out carrying a Pandoro cake. During pregnancy I had gestational diabetes, and Pandoro was something I really craved but couldn’t eat, so for a moment I genuinely thought he bought it for me as a small “welcome home” gesture.

It turned out the cake was for his uncle.

For context: his uncle has always had a very controlling, authoritarian way of interacting with the family.

My husband tends to prioritize this uncle’s feelings and expectations almost automatically, sometimes even above mine, and this dynamic has been a long-term issue between us. Because of that background, the cake incident hurt more than “it’s just a cake.” It felt like even on the day I came home after major surgery with our first baby, his mind went straight to pleasing his uncle instead of thinking of me.

Fast-forward to now: our baby is almost one. Christmas displays are everywhere, and the supermarket shelves are full of Pandoro cakes again. Every time I see them, I’m reminded of that moment in the car and I still feel a wave of disappointment.

I’m not angry on a day-to-day basis, but I do wonder whether it’s reasonable that I’m still affected by it a year later, or whether I’m placing too much meaning on a small event.

AITA for still feeling this way?

Here's what people had to say to OP:

indecisivexo wrote:

Did you voice this to your husband? It's fine to feel a way even after a long time, but emotional trauma is less about a threshold of pain to qualify as trauma and more like a spectrum. So in saying that, you have emotional trauma in some sense. You felt like less of a priority than your husband's uncle during a physically demanding and emotionally draining, hormonal time.

But we are all just humans, with the tendency to also be conditioned by fear, idolizing, anxiety and praise etc. Which can cause us to often slip up and disregard things that could hurt others unintentionally.

So NTA, BUT...Communicate properly with your S/O. Otherwise this feeling will always fester underneath as unease, it'll be that little thing that gets in the way in the future, catalyst to snowball marital problems etc. Talk with your husband and say hey, this made me feel this way...and I felt less of a priority, not an attack, just an expression.

OP responded:

I have put this disappointment aside for quite a while until recent my husband wants invite his uncle to celebrate our baby’s first birthday together, I gently suggested I want to celebrate this day just the three of us. But he is now still pushing to include his uncle on the actual day. And now I’m here.

Several-Barnacle934 wrote:

NTA first he just has to stop with a fresh newborn and postpartum mom in the car then he can’t even think about a cake for you but can think about a cake for his uncle. He is an AH. “Small events” in postpartum tell us exactly where we stand with someone close to us.

throwaway279110 wrote:

Absolutely NTA. I don't even need to tell you how much of an emotional roller coaster you go through in the first year post baby. I too had gestational diabetes during my pregnancy a couple of years ago and I had made a list of all the things I was going to eat once my LO had entered into the world 😅

So, I'm sure that your husband saw what you went through with that. If he ABSOLUTELY had to buy his uncle a cake (personally, I would've cut said uncle off by now because who has time to pander to a grown man on top of all of life's other responsibilities) then it would've been so easy to also get you a cake as well.

Like you said, he knows that you like these types of cakes, and you had also just given BIRTH!! Have you brought this up with your husband?

MarkSubstantial3759 wrote:

NTA. First year post-partum is HARD. Your hormones are still all over the place. It’s also quite a common time to build up resentment towards your partner if they are not as involved and hands on with the baby as expected.

If you never addressed the pandoro cake situation from last year, it’s completely reasonable for it to come up now at the one year mark of the birth of your baby when you are probably revisiting where you were this time last year. I’ll tell you one thing though - buy yourself that cake! You should be celebrated and after the last year of motherhood, there is nothing you can’t do!

liljen05 wrote:

My husband forgot our first wedding anniversary. The next year he hyped me up for a romantic hotel stay next to his hunting lease. Talked about it. But never made reservations for the room. Then two days before the weekend another guy on the lease said he would be in town and was staying til Tuesday. I had to be back Sunday night to take kids to school.

So he told me to just stay home so he could just stay at the lease camp longer. He forgot our anniversary again. He has invited me to the hunt lease every yr since then and I turn him down because I still hurt from him hyping me up for a hotel weekend just to change his mind.

pantelonia wrote:

NTA. I missed smoked salmon hard during my pregnancy. My SO bought me so much smoked salmon in the weeks after LO was born that there is about 10 packets still in the freezer (LO is now 4 months old).

Also we stopped at the supermarket when talking our baby home (I stayed in the car, he ran in quickly) - he bought me all the things I normally eat but had to give up during pregnancy- soft cheeses, small goods etc.