New Mom Asks For Advice After Boyfriend Says She Embarrassed Him During Childbirth — 'I Saw Him Cover His Face In Shame'
Childbirth isn't for the weak, and the weak apparently includes her baby's father.
Gorodenkoff via Shutterstock | YuliaCherry via Shutterstock | JazzIRT via Canva You don't even need to have been through it or witnessed it to know that childbirth is not for the faint of heart. And as one new mom on Reddit has revealed, some men can't even handle witnessing the process.
A new mom's boyfriend told her she embarrassed him during childbirth because she screamed too much.
Goodness gracious, that must be so hard for him. He's in our thoughts and prayers.
Snark aside, it's surely a bracing sight to see a person you love go through the often horrifying travails of childbirth. But this new dad's response was wildly insensitive.
Her boyfriend asked her to quiet down and even buried his face in his hands at one point while she was giving birth.
Both the mom and the dad are 20 years old, so perhaps this is all partly down to how young he is — few of us are exactly ready for childbirth at such a young age. Still, empathy seems to have been pretty lacking.
"I had a natural birth and my [boyfriend] was there throughout the whole process," she writes in her Reddit post. "I screamed A LOT and each time I did he whispered something like 'can you stop screaming, you're really embarrassing me.'"
That's bad enough, but it got so much worse. "I also threw up a few times and I saw him cover his face in shame," she says. Even her reliance on her midwife made him uncomfortable.
"When I held the midwife's hand for comfort he whispered 'let go of her, stop being so embarrassing.'" Which is particularly insensitive. Who else was she supposed to rely on for support? Certainly not her boyfriend — and that has her feeling heartbroken. "I'm really upset about his behavior that day, especially when it was when I needed his support the most."
People both online and in the mom's personal life have urged her to leave her insensitive boyfriend for saying she embarrassed him during childbirth.
Well, that and the fact that any time she tries to discuss the incident with him, he denies it ever happened and tells her she's being "silly."
The young mom's own mother is "very traditional," and urged her to try couples counseling first. But others were not nearly so patient given how shockingly insensitive her boyfriend's actions were.
Several commenters wondered what would have happened if the new mom's childbirth had been even worse than it was. As one commenter bluntly put it, "2/3 of women sh-t themselves during childbirth... can you only imagine if she did?"
Many saw his reactions as major red flags for the kind parent he'll be.
This is especially given how having a baby changes relationships in even the best-case scenarios. "Please don't feel like you have to stay with him just because you have a baby together. You deserve better than this," one commenter wrote.
Having an unsupportive partner during childbirth can be incredibly damaging, and in the end, this new mom decided to leave her partner.
Experts say that a supportive partner is to an extent a make-or-break situation when it comes to welcoming a new baby. A 2012 study showed that perceived partner support had a direct impact on not only a mother's postpartum emotional stress levels but the newborn infant's as well, showing this issue is about far more than insensitivity.
This new mom surely experienced this firsthand—in a follow-up to her Reddit post, she wrote that she had broken up with him, moved in with her parents and is planning to go to therapy after her instincts, and those of the Redditors who warned her about red flags, were quickly proven correct.
She wrote that when she confronted her boyfriend about going to couples counseling, he blew up and began abusively screaming at her and the baby. It just goes to show that the famous old Maya Angelou quote really is the truth — "when people show you who they are, believe them the first time."
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.