Woman's Sister Names Her Newborn After The Baby She Lost & Calls Her A 'Drama Queen' For Reacting Badly
She's wondering if she overreacted.
Art_Photo / Shutterstock A 32-year-old woman and her 30-year-old husband had been trying to have a baby for years, so when they finally got pregnant, they were through the roof that it had finally paid off.
However, one night when the mother was in severe pain, she had to deliver a baby that didn’t survive, losing her child but being fortunate enough to have the support from her family and her husband to get through the loss.
Now, she’s wondering if she should be upset with her sister for naming her daughter after the child she lost.
The woman posted on Reddit after blowing up at her sister and being gaslit into believing that she was overreacting, but it’s a good thing she went looking for a second opinion.
The subreddit “r/AmItheA--hole” (AITA) is the perfect place to go looking for a second opinion as the grisly, hot-take veterans scour every inch of the forum to look for a story they can sink their personal experiences into.
They’ll typically give a rating that says “You’re the A--hole” (YTA), or you’re “Not the A--hole” (NTA), along with some information about why they chose the rating, some advice, or their own personal experience about something similar that happened.
But this seems like quite the unique case of audacious family members.
After her sister’s due date came around half a year later, she delivered the baby and named her after her sister’s stillborn child.
“I got extremely angry and upset with her telling her it was uncomfortable and inconsiderate to name her this name and she shouldn't have picked it but she's telling me it's a ‘tribute’ to her dead cousin,” she wrote.
Who in their right mind would name their own child after the child their sibling lost? Especially six months later? Especially without talking about it first?
Many people took issue with the “tribute” part of her sister’s explanation, saying that if it was truly a tribute then she would have brought it up to her or asked her about it.
Instead, she went right ahead and named her child after her sister’s stillborn.
Typically, AITA is very much of the mindset that no one owns a name, but many people pointed out that this is a very unique case that they haven’t seen on the subreddit yet.
But it gets worse once the rest of the family gets involved as well.
“I'm now refusing to talk to her and our family [is] telling me I'm being a drama queen and ‘a name is just a name’ and I should be proud of having a tribute,” she continued. “We went through a burial and everything and they saw how devastated I was and still am.”
This family is clearly of the same mindset but doesn’t recognize that it was insensitive of her sister to name her child after her stillborn.
Had her sister come up to her and asked her if she was okay with it or even made the name a middle name, it would have been an entirely different story, but that never happened.
They know how devastated she was and how they had to be there with her for it all, so how couldn’t they understand what was wrong?
Well, after discussing it with other people, the original poster decided to post an update.
“Update for Everyone who wrote I was being gaslit,” she started, “I've never really understood that term used before but after some research and speaking to my therapist friend, I think I might be in a narcissistic family.”
Fortunately, no one sided with the family, and no one believed that her sister was in the right, but the action still stings and she’ll likely need time to work through this alongside the grief she might have already been suffering from.
Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Follow him on Twitter here.