My mother-in-law surprised my partner with a prepaid ‘paternity holiday’
If you’ve had a baby, do you even remember the first few weeks with them? The days and nights roll into one big sleep-deprived blur of baby poo and sore nipples.
Now imagine your mother-in-law treated your partner to a solo vacation while you’re at home still healing from the birth. For one woman, this is reality, and now she’s being made to feel like the bad guy!
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“I really need the support right now”
“I’m 37 weeks pregnant now and my boyfriend took three weeks off work to stay with me so that we can adjust to being parents to a newborn,” the woman wrote in her post to Reddit.
“This is my first and I’m very nervous and really need the support right now.
“My boyfriend’s mother took it upon herself to schedule a ‘paternity vacation’ for my boyfriend for the last two weeks of his leave. She came over for dinner and surprised him with it. It’s an all-expenses paid vacation to Italy for my boyfriend as his paternity present.”
The woman said she wasn’t left out as her mother-in-law also gifted her a matching mother/baby bracelet set, but feels as though the holiday was rather badly-timed.
“I told her that his leave was for helping with the baby,” she continued.
“She was taken aback and said that he would be with me for a week and that was long enough. Her husband never even stayed at the hospital with her when her son was born.”
The woman told her boyfriend that she didn’t want him to go, and she told the mother-in-law that she shouldn’t have purchased such an “extraordinary gift” without first discussing it with them.
“She left in tears because I was ‘ungrateful’ and ruining her son’s experience,” she said.
“My boyfriend pretty much agrees that he should go for at least a week because she paid for it but I really wanted him to stay with me and bond with our daughter.”
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“What was his mother thinking?”
She asked Redditors if she was wrong to say something.
It was unanimously agreed that the man should absolutely not go on his ‘paternity vacation’.
“What an asinine idea!” declared one commenter. “A vacation AWAY from his one-week-old baby? What in the literal f**k was his mother thinking?”
Another added, “I hope your boyfriend figures out — and fast! — that his primary role should be to educate his mother, not placate her.”
“If the guy is somehow OK leaving his first kid after a week to have two weeks of ‘me-time’ in Italy, I shudder to think what kind of father he’d make,” chimed in a third.
“If he’s OK with leaving still very much healing you alone to handle the once every three-hour feedings with no help, what kind of partner is he?”
The mum-to-be later added that her mother is also of the opinion that her son’s precious eyeballs shouldn’t be subjected to the horrors of childbirth.
“She said it will make him see me in a different way and he needs to remember the way I was before,” she explained.
“She thinks it’s gross for other people other than medical personnel to witness a birth.”
Is there any universe in which a ‘paternity vacation’ is called for? We think not.
Read related topics:Reddit
