Dad asks if he was wrong to tell wife's friends the truth about difficult birth.
Giving birth is hard, and sometimes, women can get competitive about who gave 'the best birth.' Women sometimes feel ashamed if they didn't have a good experience giving birth, and sometimes, their husbands don't understand that. When this dad/husband reveals to his wife's friends that she's lying about how easy their daughter's birth was, he takes to the popular Reddit Forum to ask:
AITA for correcting my wife when she lied to her friend group about our daughter's birth?
OP is the dad/husband.
3 months ago my wife and I had our baby. As they often our, her delivery got a little messy. From the day we found out she was pregnant, she decided she wanted to do a natural birth. She told me she wanted a vaginal birth, no epidural, no sedatives, no pain meds, she wanted to bring our baby into the world feeling everything.
I of course really worried about this as, from what I've heard childbirth can be painful. I was especially worried about if she needed an episiotomy and was not sedated during it. She however assured me she could handle it. So 9 months go by and she's ready to pop. -guyfromthefamilyguy
Oh no, I'm worried for the OP's wife.
When we get to the hospital I do my best to advocate for her and make sure her wants were heard. However, we got right up to the wire before my wife said she needed an epidural. They took care of that and when she's pushing our daughter's giant head won't fit through my wife's vagina.
So she gets an emergency episiotomy and brings our daughter into the world. Now three months later we're allowing non-family to meet our daughter. My wife invited over her girlfriends and since they are officially all moms, they started talking about their birth stories. I heard some horrific things, and then we got to my wife.
And here comes the lie...
All she said was that she had an easy birth, no sedatives, no surgeries, just a few hours of pushing and done. The lie was confusing to me, I was trying to think of why she'd say this. I ask her if she's sure about that because I don't remember it happening that way. She tells me that she's the one that shot a person out of her.
I suggest that maybe the pain and baby hormones are scrambling about how that happened. I tell the real story and say that she got an epidural and episiotomy. This led to the other ladies making jokes and giggling about my wife's mistelling. There were many jokes at her expense despite her not even having the worst birth story. For the rest of the visit, I could tell there was something brewing behind her eyes.
Ummmm....read the room OP? But still, why did his wife feel the need to lie?
When they left, my wife said I embarrassed her. She said that there was no reason for me to tell them what happened. I said there was no reason to lie. She completely disagreed and said that I wouldn't get it. AITA?
Is OP the AH? Let's see what Reddit had to say...
ESH - you probably should not have outed her like that. She's an AH for lying though, and possibly doing some more damage / unintended damage by glossing over the need for medical escalation and continuing a false narrative of the 'perfect natural' birth that other women might try to emulate and thus make poor decisions. -ddecimal
This. ESH. The competition for the perfect natural birth is really damaging to women and leads to a general sense of shame/failure when having a healthy baby is a major accomplishment- full stop. That said- mean to out her publicly. -laurag68
YTA. Saying that, she could be really traumatized and just wanted it to be 'fine' so she didn't have to divulge her personal experience. I'm not saying it was the right thing to do, but she may have just needed to get through the conversation. -briefaspossible
NTA OP. I had an episiotomy during birth... and there's a difference between avoiding the story and outright lying. Like lying full on that she had an easy birth and no sedatives. t's just WRONG. I hate how people think that because they have a mental illness or trauma, lying is just okay now. It is not.
She could have said something else, played down what happened. But she LIED. All those women sound horrendous though. Who the f*** mocks a woman about her birth? -aitaisadrug
I'm on the fence. If she’s an AH for lying about issues that are damaging to the women she lied to, how is he an AH for revealing that lie and saving those women from the potential harm his wife’s lies would have caused them? That doesn’t really make sense. -konradwayne