Pregnant Woman Doesn't Want To Tell Her Mom Or In-Laws When She Has Her Baby Because They're 'On The Narc Spectrum'
She doesn't want them to steal the happy event for their own attention.
New Africa / Shutterstock Giving birth is a very personal experience. Everyone has their own idea of what they want, and they are completely within their rights to make those plans.
Unfortunately, family members aren’t always respectful of that.
One woman doesn’t want to immediately tell her mother and in-laws when she gives birth.
A pregnant woman posted on Reddit to ask if it's a bad decision to forego telling her family when her baby is born.
“My mom (widowed) and in-laws are all three on the narc spectrum, with my mom being the worst,” she explained.
“I’m going to have a planned C-section later this month, and I don’t want to tell anyone ahead of time, and I don’t want to announce [the] baby’s birth, sex, or name until we are home, which will probably be four days after birth,” she continued.
The woman shared that this would be far from the first time her family had taken over an exciting event and made it all about them.
“I’m tired of my milestones and news being hijacked by my mom, and I don’t want my phone blowing up while I’m in the hospital,” she said. “For example, when my [brother-in-law] asked my mom for her blessing, she told everyone that my sister was engaged/getting engaged before he actually had the chance to propose. Sister is still hurt she found out from a cousin congratulating her.”
The woman said that she and her husband had good reason to want to keep their baby’s name a secret at first.
“We are planning on a baby name that would honor a late family member, and I know my mom will call the honoree’s next of kin and make it all about herself, and I want to be able to, after surgery, make those calls and announcements myself,” she shared.
She understands how this could affect people, though. “However, I might be the [expletive] because healthy and narc family members would feel hurt/confused/excluded at not being told about a major surgery or the birth/death of a family member for four-plus days,” she said.
Is narcissism really a spectrum?
Narcissism isn’t often discussed as a spectrum. It would also be easy to interpret the woman’s insistence that her family is “on the narc spectrum” as a sarcastic joke. However, narcissism actually does occur on a spectrum.
Psychology Today explained, “Narcissism is properly viewed on a spectrum. The trait is normally distributed in the population, with most people scoring near the middle, and a few at either extreme.”
According to this information, we’re all on the narcissistic spectrum somewhere, even if a majority of people are not at the high end.
It’s also easy to joke around and call someone a narcissist or even to do so seriously if they seem to exhibit narcissistic behaviors. However, that doesn’t mean everyone who is self-centered is a narcissist.
Psychology Today continued, “It’s easy to describe someone who spends a bit too much time talking about her career or who never seems to doubt himself as a narcissist, but the trait is more complicated than that.”
In fact, narcissism is not always what people think it is. “Narcissism does not necessarily represent a surplus of self-esteem or of insecurity; more accurately, it encompasses a hunger for appreciation or admiration, a desire to be the center of attention, and an expectation of special treatment reflecting perceived higher status,” they said.
Therefore, this woman saying that her mom and in-laws are “on the narc spectrum” might be a little bit extreme.
Unless they have actually received some kind of official diagnosis, it is likely that they are just self-centered and enjoy hogging the spotlight rather than being actual narcissists.
Either way, this woman has every right for her baby’s birth to go the way that she wants it to.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer for YourTango who covers entertainment, news and human interest topics.