Months After Divorcing Her Husband Of 10 Years, A Woman Is Asked To Babysit Her Ex's New Baby Since She Already 'Stays Home' With His Other Kids
His girlfriend is five months pregnant and he's only been divorced for six months.
Nusara Promsiri / Getty Images via Canva, Natalia Bostan / Shutterstock Breaking up is not fun, especially when you’ve put years of time and dedication into your marriage. One woman who split with her husband after ten years of marriage and is admittedly still not over him was taken aback by a request she received from him and his new girlfriend.
The story was originally shared to Reddit's "r/AmItheA--hole" (AITA) and later uploaded to a TikTok account called "Reddit Stories And Moments."
They'd been divorced for just 6 months after being married for a decade, and he is already expecting a baby with his new girlfriend.
The former wife admitted that she had not gotten over her ex-husband yet, although he had moved on. According to her, “It was, and still is a messy split. I’m still hurt about it, and he seems to have completely moved on somehow.”
She went on to explain that when she and her husband had their first child, they didn’t want him in daycare. So, she stayed home and launched her own remote business. With assistance from her retired parents, the situation worked perfectly.
Her ex-husband wasted no time getting his new lady pregnant and at five months along, her due date is fast approaching. She is a nurse and asked him to look at daycares with him so she could return to work after having the baby.
The man, still adamantly against sending his children to daycare, refused and an argument ensued.
He would never allow his kids to go to daycare and expected his girlfriend to stay home and take care of their child.
The man called his ex-wife to vent his frustrations about the situation and during that conversation came up with what he thought was a great solution to the problem. He asked her to take care of the baby while he and his girlfriend worked. He believed it was a perfect solution since she was already home with their children and her parents could help.
“I sort of lost it on him,” she said. “It was a year of [welled up] anger and hurt and I said some nasty things that I since apologized for.” Three days after that heated discussion, her ex-husband’s girlfriend approached her as she dropped the kids off at their house.
She accused the Redditor of being 'ugly' about the situation, believing her kids were better, and asked why her baby doesn’t deserve the same things that the two older children got.
Though she had never said those things, the woman apologized for the fact that her words had been perceived that way. She told her kids’ new stepmother that she was happy for them but would not babysit their child. With that, she left “before it blew up again.”
Just two hours after she left, her ex-husband called frantically and asked her to come get their kids because he and his girlfriend were fighting. He didn’t want the children to witness the conflict, so the poster went and picked her kids up.
On the way home, undeterred by her refusal, her ex-husband upped the ante by texting her and again asking her to babysit. This time, he sweetened the deal by offering to pay her $200 per week.
Once again, his ex-wife declined, causing him to lash out and call her “bitter.” Since then, the new girlfriend has been texting and having her friends and family leave bad reviews on the woman’s business. Her ex-husband hasn’t brought the subject up again but has been short with her when discussing their children.
Divorces require two adults who are emotionally intelligent for their kids’ sake and their own sanity — a heavy lift when the parties already have a history of relationship issues.
It’s easy to assume that the ex-husband was already involved with his new lover before separating from his wife, given the timeline. The audacity to ask a woman who has not yet had adequate time to heal is mindboggling. Inserting his new woman into an already tense situation only adds insult to injury and makes the woman he expects to co-parent with less apt to cooperate.
NyRee Ausler is a writer from Seattle, Washington. She covers lifestyle, relationship, and human-interest stories that readers can relate to and that bring social issues to the forefront for discussion.