The woman's friends told her that she was very negative person and that she needed to rethink her thoughts.
Editor's note: This article was originally published on December 31, 2021. It has since been updated.
The struggles of motherhood are incredibly real, women often find themselves struggling with criticism and shaming from others who don't agree with their parenting methods or choices. One woman was harshly criticized by her own friends for wanting to live in case complications arose from her pregnancy. The conversation first came up two years ago, when the woman was pregnant with her first child. She explained that when she was pregnant with her first child, she developed gestational diabetes.
Preventable pregnancy-related death is a devastating issue nationwide. Today, American women are 50% more likely than their mothers to die during childbirth. We must do better to invest in the health of mothers at all stages - before, during, & after pregnancy. #MaternalHealth
— Lauren Underwood (@LaurenUnderwood) November 3, 2019
She took to the AITA thread of Reddit to share her story: So before going in to the hospital I talked with my husband that if something where to happened and he needed to choose between myself and our baby to please choose me. He got quiet but said that he agreed and that please let me mother know about what we talked. Everything went according to plan and both of us were completely fine. More recently a friend at a party asked her if she was ready for another nine months of pregnancy, and she replied honestly: I said that I do want another baby and that pregnancy doesn’t scare me such as giving birth again. I said that I straight told my husband again that I’m scared that something may happened to me during the birth and in the hopes of giving my daughter a sibling I could leave her without a mother. That the original agreement stands that he needs to choose me if that’s the case.
This decision to live made her friends "disgusted" and they called her "an a**hole to my husband in asking him to basically kill his baby (those where the exact words), that I was a very negative person and that I needed to rethink my thoughts. I’m a person that likes to be prepared for the worse case scenario and hope for the best. I didn’t want my husband to be blindsided with who to choose and to have the answer on the spot. Nobody likes to think in what could go wrong specially in a pregnancy but I need to think every possible case that we could encounter. So Reddit AITA!?"
Fortunately, Redditors were a lot more compassionate and empathetic to the situation than the woman's own friends. "NTA -- it's your f---ing life," one person wrote. "You can make another baby, there can't be another you. Also, if your husband agreed, it's none of their business." "Exactly," someone else added. "A widow father with two kids will have a lower quality of life than a healthy mother and father with just one child. I’m not looking down on single fathers by the way! I just think the family would be happier if the mother was alive. They can choose to have future kids but they can’t choose to bring the mother back to life if she dies."
It's definitely not an easy decision and in fact, truly a heartbreaking choice as well so more people weighed in. "I’m fully aware I might sound like a monster here," one person commented, "but the mom has a developed identity and life and people who love her and whose lives have been enriched by her. Not a baby just born." Another person agreed. "This is a perfectly reasonable response that most people throughout history would agree with, not monstrous at all. For some reason we now live in this weird cult of motherhood as sacrifice, which is what makes your comment seem unusual when it shouldn't be."
Representational Cover Image Source: Getty Images | globalmoments
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