For the most part, preparing for a new baby can be an exciting time for expecting parents. However, it can also raise some scary scenarios and questions that parents need to be prepared for.
One mom recently shared her experiences on Reddit after her friends were “disgusted” when she said she would want her husband to save her life over her baby’s if they ran into complications.
Childbirth has become so routine that we sometimes forget how dangerous it can be.
The maternal mortality rate in the United States has actually gone up, making it the only developed country in the world to see this trend.
While a majority of women giving birth have healthy and normal deliveries, some can be put in life-threatening situations.
It can be a heart-wrenching decision, but sadly, some families have to choose between saving the mother or saving the baby.
One woman recently shared her experience with this on Reddit.
Going by the username Aithana, the mom explained that when she was pregnant with her first child, she developed gestational diabetes.
Before heading to her scheduled C-section, Aithana told her husband that if anything happened during the procedure to save her life over the baby’s.
“He got quiet but said that he agreed and [to] please let [my] mother know about what we talked,” she wrote in her post.
Fast forward to the present day, and the mom said she was recently asked if her family would try for another baby.
“I said that I straight told my husband again that I’m scared that something may [happen] to me during the birth and in the hopes of giving my daughter a sibling I could leave her without a mother,” she said.
The mom said she shared with her friends that if she did give birth again and ran into complications, she expected her husband to save her life over their baby’s.
However, Aithana said her friends were “disgusted” that she had asked her husband to choose her over their baby.
Aithana said her friends criticized her and said she had asked her husband to “basically kill his baby.”
However, she explained to them that this request had come from wanting to be prepared in case of an emergency.
The mom said she didn’t want her husband to be faced with a dilemma in an emergency.
“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 [especially] in a pregnancy but I need to think every possible case that we could encounter,” she said.
Aithana then asked Reddit if she was misguided for asking her husband to save her.
She posted her story on the popular subreddit AmITheAsshole?, where people ask other Reddit users for advice and to see if they were in the wrong during an argument.
Her story garnered over 3,000 comments on the subreddit.
Many weighed in on this mom’s story and shared their own experiences of having this difficult conversation with their own partners.
Online, people overwhelmingly sided with the mom and said she was right to have this agreement with her husband.
“You can make another baby, there can’t be another you. Also, if your husband agreed, it’s none of their business,” one Reddit user said.
Others said the friends’ reactions were the result of “modern parenting culture.”
“I hate the modern parenting culture where mothers are expected to always martyr themselves, where her health and her needs are totally ignored in favor of the baby. It’s dehumanizing. There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to live,” said another Reddit user.
Many moms said they had the same agreement with their own husbands.
“During both my pregnancies we were in agreement that if the unthinkable would happen then I was the one with priority, doubly more so the second time because neither of us could fathom leaving our oldest and a newborn motherless,” another Reddit user said.
Moms online said they had similar discussions with their own husbands.
“Maybe I am different than most, but this is a conversation I had before giving birth as well. No one wants to think about these things, but I wanted to be prepared. No one wants to lose their baby or their spouse, although rare, these are possibilities during childbirth,” said one Reddit user.
This conversation can be difficult for expecting parents and their families, but this story shows how important it can be as well.
