Twenty-six hours of unmedicated labor sounds like an endurance sport that should come with a gold medal and a lifetime supply of massages. It is a grueling, vulnerable, and messy experience that requires a support person who is actually supportive. Unfortunately for one new mom on Reddit, her husband decided to treat the delivery room like a frat house lounge instead of a medical event.
The OP was in the thick of it, battling through contractions without an epidural, while her husband sat there glued to his phone. He wasn’t timing contractions or offering ice chips. He was playing games and loudly chatting with his friends. Apparently, his “bros” were on a trip that he had to miss because, you know, his wife was having his baby. Instead of being present, he spent the time catching up on the fun he was missing and complaining to them about his wife being a “nag” for asking him to be quiet.
Calling your laboring wife a nag to your friends is grounds for immediate expulsion from the room, if not the marriage. He was acting like a petulant teenager who got grounded on the night of the big party. The OP told him to take his conversation elsewhere if he wanted to chat, which is a perfectly reasonable request when you are trying to push a human being out of your body. He agreed to hang up, but the peace was short-lived because his mother decided to join the chaos.
Just twenty minutes later, the husband accepted a FaceTime call from his mother and, in a move that defies all logic, pointed the camera at his wife. Labor is not a spectator sport, and it certainly isn’t content for a video call. To make matters worse, the mother-in-law used this opportunity to brag about how good she looked during her own labor. She claimed she did her hair and makeup so well that the doctor was flirting with her. It takes a special kind of narcissism to make your daughter-in-law’s agony about your own past beauty.
The OP was trying to hold it together to avoid disrespecting her mother-in-law, but the nurse read the room perfectly. She saw a distressed patient and asked if everything was okay. The OP admitted she just wanted to be alone. The nurse, acting as the hero of this story, kicked the husband out. This is where the husband’s behavior shifts from annoying to unforgivable. Instead of waiting in the hallway or the waiting room like a rational adult, he stormed out of the hospital entirely.
He missed the birth of his first daughter because he threw a temper tantrum. He was so angry about being told to leave the room that he abandoned his wife and child completely. He refused to come back to see the baby afterwards, choosing to nurse his bruised ego rather than bond with his newborn. The mother-in-law, naturally, is taking his side and calling the OP a “bad wife” for ruining the moment.
It is laughable that he thinks the OP ruined the bonding moment. He ruined it the second he prioritized his phone games and his mother’s vanity over his wife’s comfort. He had twenty-six hours to step up and be a partner, and he failed every single second of it. Leaving the hospital was a choice he made. He could have swallowed his pride and waited five minutes to come back in, but he wanted to punish her for setting a boundary.
Now he is claiming he can “never forgive” her for making him miss the birth. This is classic gaslighting. He missed the birth because he left the building. He is trying to rewrite history to make himself the victim when he was actually the villain. The OP just wanted peace during one of the most painful experiences of her life, and he couldn’t even give her that.
So, is the OP the ahole? Not even a little bit. She birthed a child while dealing with a husband who acted like one. If he wants to be treated like a dad, he needs to start acting like one, and that starts with realizing the world doesn’t revolve around his phone calls.
What would you do if your partner called you a “nag” while you were in labor? Would you have kicked him out too, or let him keep chatting with the bros? Let us know in the comments if you think the nurse deserves a raise for handling this man-child!