Woman asks if she was wrong to tell SIL that her miscarriage was for her own good.
Being pregnant can be exciting, but what if it hurts someone in your family that suffered a miscarriage? When this woman is annoyed with her SIL for making her gender reveal party all about her loss, she takes to the popular Reddit forum to ask:
'AITA for implying that it's for her own good that my SIL lost her pregnancy ?'
My SIL used to be a drug addict, with no stable job and trapped in toxic relationships, till she got pregnant 2 years ago, but ended up miscarrying cause of her unhinged behaviour. Since then she turned her life around, accepted to get help for her addiction and she's clean and has a stable income.
However, there's still one problem with her : she still mourns her lost pregnancy almost everytime we see her, which I understood initially, as it would be a pretty big trauma for everyone, but it's been years since then and her pity parties already got pretty old, especially ( and I know I might sound cynical ) when her lost pregnancy was what made her turn her life around for the better.
Fast forward, I (28F) got pregnant with my husband of 3 years (29M) and yesterday we made a gender reveal party for our families ( it's a boy btw ). His sister was of course there and not long after the reveal she started to reminiscence about much she'd wanted to become a mother as well and how much she got affected by her pregnancy.
I quickly got sick of this, as not only she was once again pulling this stunt, but she was doing at my gender reveal in order to get all the attention on her. And so I told her that she should reconsider her miscarriage as a blessing in disguise, as it finally gave her the help she needed to turn her life around.
She looked shocked at me and then asked me if I seriously think that her miscarriage was a good thing. I told her that considering that back then she was a drug addict who was changing her jobs and partners constantly with a father who wasn't in the picture.
It's probably for the better that her child wasn't brought into the world in these conditions. After that she, together with my parents-in-law, started blowing off at me, telling me that just because I lack empathy doesn't mean I get to reduce her trauma to a good thing.
My husband intervened and finally managed to calm them down and the party ended abruptly. After everyone left, my husband took aside and told me that what I said was really out of line and my pregnancy hormones aren't an excuse to act so unhinged.
That made me blew off at me, telling him to cut the misogynistic crap about pregnant women being out of control, as there was nothing unhinged about what I said to his sister, it was just the rational truth and if he wants to see unhinged behaviour, he should look no further than his own family.
He got too ashamed to say anything else after that and I made him sleep on the couch, so I wouldn't need to hear any more BS coming from his mouth. AITA ?
Let's find out.
baconeggcheesspk writes:
YTA.There’s nothing misogynistic about calling out inappropriate behavior when you see it.
You could have got up and walked away and refilled your drink or greeted your other guests etc when she started to talk about her loss during your party. But you chose to be unkind. I hope to god that this is just hormones and not your natural disposition to be so unkind.
I hope you don’t teach your son to tell people that their pregnant loss is a blessing.
jilltro makes this interesting point:
Agreed and I’m actually surprised there are so many Y T As when ESH. The sister in law waxing poetic about her miscarriage at a celebration for another child is absolutely 100% inappropriate and OP was well within her rights to get upset about it.
But telling her you’re glad she miscarried and it was for the best is ghoulish. I’m wondering how much SILs bad behavior spilled over into OPs life because either she’s hyper judgmental (entirely possible) or she still has some major resentment she needs to work through.
ladyeleanor8 disagrees:
NTA- life sucks, but she is milking that miscarriage. She needs to get some therapy and move on with life if it bothers her so bad.
I had a miscarriage while on drugs/alcohol too, That baby could have come out with 3 eyes and 10 thumbs for all I know, so I counted it as a blessing. However, I was sad because I loved the father but he had broken up with me because I was partying hard at the time.