January 21, 2025 at 5:48 am

Grandma Watched Her Grandkids While Her Daughter-In-Law Was In Labor, But When It Took Too Long She Asks Her Son To Leave His Wife’s Bedside And Come Back To Relieve Her

by Kyra Piperides

Source: Reddit/AITA/Pexels/Jonathan Borba

Childbirth can be a wholly unpredictable process.

One moment it seems to be taking forever; the next there is a screaming baby in the room.

Most people get this – except for the Grandma in this story, whose behavior while her daughter-in-law was in labor is beyond incomprehensible.

Read on to see how she ended up losing Grandma privileges.

AITA for asking my son to come home to help with his kids, while his wife was being induced?

I am 71 and have a 39-year-old son whose wife gave birth to their fourth child nine months ago.

All of her births have taken a long time, and she has been induced the last two times, including this one.

My husband (72) and I were babysitting the three older kids, aged 5, 4, and 2 while my daughter-in-law was induced.

She was induced at eight in the morning, and by one in the afternoon, there was not much progress, if any at all.

The kids are a handful, so I told my son he needed to come home to help for a few hours, since it looked like it would take a really long time.

They live half an hour away from the hospital, so he could go back if anything happened – it is not like he wouldn’t be present when the child was born, which I of course understand is a big moment for him and his wife.

Yikes! Let’s see how this woman’s son responded to her request.

My son took great offense to my request and told me to suck it up, bribe the kids with treats or whatever worked for us.

He said that there was no way he would leave his wife’s side, unless there was an emergency with one of the kids, like they were admitted to the hospital or something.

I told him that the kids were their responsibility, and that they couldn’t expect us to babysit around the clock if this took days.

He told me we should not have agreed to babysit at all if we wouldn’t stick it out, since one never knows how long a birth will take.

He said that he would get someone to come, and then he hung up.

Three hours later someone showed up to look after the kids and we went home.

But the family problems were only just beginning.

We offered to babysit for a few hours the next day, but our offer was declined because the people who came to relieve us had agreed to stay until the baby was born and my son came home.

After this they have not asked us to babysit once; he has hired a sitter instead, which we feel is a waste of money since we are available for free.

We get to see the grandkids if we visit them, but they very seldom visit us, compared to before.

I tried talking to both my son and my daughter-in-law, but they said they felt we didn’t respect them at all since we wouldn’t “even let her give birth in peace”.

Uh-oh. Let’s see how the elderly grandparents responded.

My husband and I agree that they are overreacting, since she did not, in fact, give birth until seven the next morning.

This was 23 hours after she was induced, so our son could very easily have helped us with the kids for a few hours.

AITA?

As a mother herself, this woman should know that births can be unpredictable.

It’s totally understandable that her son did not want to leave his wife’s side, especially when his kids were safe with their grandparents.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this.

This person thought the grandparents were completely wrong – for their behavior during the birth, and afterwards.

Source: Reddit/AITA

And others agreed that her son and his wife were reacting totally reasonably to his parents’ horrible behavior.

Source: Reddit/AITA

Meanwhile, this person thought that someone who has given birth at least once should show a little more understanding.

Source: Reddit/AITA

Harassing her son and daughter-in-law during childbirth is totally unacceptable.

This Grandma needs a reality check.

If you liked that story, read this one about grandparents who set up a college fund for their grandkid because his parents won’t, but then his parents want to use the money to cover sibling’s medical expenses.