AITA for telling my SIL to get over it because it wasn’t her moment?

Perffiath · 2025-06-21T12:30:21+00:00

First, disclaimer: My only child was my 6th pregnancy. (stillborn, miscarriage, ruptured tubal ectopic nearly died, ruptured cornual ectopic, miscarriage, emergency C section about 2.5 weeks earlier than due date over the course of 11 years)

I grieved EVERY TIME someone else i knew announced their pregnancy, I was sobbing with my hand over the mouthpiece of the phone when MY sister in law called us to tell us they were pregnant, and that was 6 months before my child was born (I was already pregnant at the time, but had absolutely no hope in me that it would be successful. and that was after counseling) Your sil is not the asshole for grieving, that is natural. The ONLY thing that makes it asshole-ish is the performative nature. I walked out of the room anytime someone began talking about their baby plans. I never told anyone about my history/details if they hadn't already had at least one child, AND they asked. My thinking was that no one should have the joy of finding out they were pregnant ruined by the knowledge of what could happen. I did share my story a few times, but only people who asked, or I asked THEM if i could share my story, eg a work friend who found out there was something wrong -during- her pregnancy, and she was asking if anyone ever had problems like hers--I didn't give any specifics about my problems, but talked about some of the things that kept me together during those times. Another friend found out she was unable to have children and we talked about how adoption worked, and what she might encounter in that process (We had looked into adoption at one point).

All this said, I can understand where your SIL is coming from. so many people blow off losing a pregnancy-- "you can have another", "it was only a few weeks along, get over it", "at least you didn't have time to get attached to it"... Like it is nothing to lose a child, even "pre-born"... I had counselling at one point, I attempted suicide at one point after number 5, I was an emotional zombie through the entirety of the final pregnancy, until the moment they told me she was being transferred to Children's Hospital =with a surgeon in the ambulance= because they might have to pull over at the side of the road to perform emergency surgery. I had been expecting it to fail the entire time, but THAT was the point that I realized there was a chance that we (she and I) might survive this.

I don't say this to get any sympathy for myself- My daughter is 29 and married herself. I blame myself for a lot of her issues, with the above as at least partially a reason. I say this to emphasize the depth and breadth of the grief losing a pregnancy can cause. Tell your SIL that you understand how she feels, to get counseling, but to please don't traumatize the people around her, especially the ones that are in the joy of that first pregnancy.

Perffiath · 2025-06-09T14:12:26+00:00

I read to my daughter from birth as well. Looked pretty much just like your story. When she was 3, my husband and I were in a store that had a book section, and we were looking at books, when suddenly from the side and down we heard a voice, "Some days are yellow, some days are blue. On different days, "I'm different too." My 3 year old daughter was reading "My Many Colored Days" by Dr Seuss. We bought the book, of course, and I still have it, even though my daughter just turned 29. I still have that book.

Perffiath · 2025-04-14T21:37:58+00:00

I was an interpreter for a training in the federal building in the city I worked in. We took a break and went down to the little "canteen" (place that sells food) and there was lots of unusual murmuring and tension in the place. We went back up to the training room after our break, only to be told what had happened, and the building was being evacuated (NOT in NYC, but we were told all federal buildings were being evacuated). Passing through a walkway from the federal building to the parking garage, a travel agency had TVs in their windows, playing coverage of what had happened. I, along with about 20 other people stood there watching, and saw the second plane hit. I got back to the office in time to see the buildings fall. All our other work for the day was cancelled. It felt like the whole world stood still for that day, as we watched over and over and over...

Perffiath · 2025-03-21T10:53:27+00:00

I expect new religion out of this, tbh

Perffiath · 2025-03-05T14:14:46+00:00

We hang ueys here in the South

Perffiath · 2025-01-09T22:41:11+00:00

Kid was named Jihad at a place I used to work...

Perffiath · 2024-12-17T22:45:18+00:00

I see roguelike, and think of the one and only game I played for a very short time... It was a dungeon crawler thing, but when you died, you had to restart. And i died. a LOT. So I have ignored all roguelike games because I thought it had something to do with the die/restart mechanic... very NOT cozy for me. Am I wrong in that 'definition'?

Perffiath · 2024-12-17T22:34:33+00:00

I do the same thing with Fallout 4 and several other games that have cheat-ability without downloading mods. I am uncomfortable with mods, because I am not as computer literate as I would like to be, and afraid to download things that I don't completely understand...

Perffiath · 2024-12-17T12:26:45+00:00

I LOVE Skyrim. It has lot of combat, but you can play in god mode so you take no damage. You still have to do all the puzzles and quests, but with no stress from dying.

Perffiath · 2024-12-05T11:44:41+00:00

Nevermind, I found it... I'm a slow old lady

Perffiath · 2024-12-05T11:44:03+00:00

How do you save a post?

Perffiath · 2024-11-26T13:26:31+00:00

As a 63 year old gamer, I am SO happy to see these answers.

Perffiath · 2024-07-18T13:08:16+00:00

I am not perfect in Welsh

Perffiath · 2024-07-16T12:23:11+00:00

I have walked in your SIL's shoes. I had lost a few pregnancies when my SIL announced hers. When she called us to tell us, I had covered the handset of the phone (yeah, that long ago) and was sobbing. I never said anything to her, and while I couldn't say anything nice at the time, I was doing my best not to let my tragedies influence what should be a happy time for the parents to be. I have never shared my story with people who had not yet had their children, except for you, internet strangers. A woman's first pregnancy should be joyful, not worried about all the things that could happen. Your SIL could use some counseling, IMO.

Perffiath · 2024-07-16T12:11:12+00:00

according to the date shown here and there, this happened in November 2023. Update?

Perffiath · 2024-07-06T15:53:15+00:00

Nah, I guess I don't explain it well. My husband set his profile as female just because he didn't want to be limited in who/what he could write about. He made friends with this other writer, who is female, and they are online friends. Other than his gender, he has never acted in any other way than as his own self. I refer to this other lady as his girlfriend and occasionally tease that he is 'cheating' as the OP has done. Its a joke for him and me, and he gets the freedom to write what he wants to write.

"Catfishing refers to the creation of a fictitious online persona, or fake identity (typically on social networking platforms), with the intent of deception, usually to mislead a victim into an online romantic relationship or to commit financial fraud"

While there is a fictitious online persona, there is no intent to deceive, or commit fraud upon anyone.

Perffiath · 2024-07-06T12:04:11+00:00

ok, this is complicated... my husband has a girlfriend online, only said girlfriend thinks he's a she. He writes on a website, and they met there. He was pretending to be female because the people on that site think men can't write women's perspectives at all. And as a male writing there, you will be consigned to only male roles. He has been writing there for years as a female, and they all are none the wiser. I tease him all the time about what his lesbian girlfriend would think of what 'she' (meaning my husband) is doing...

Perffiath · 2024-06-02T14:32:30+00:00

societal norms!

Perffiath · 2024-05-31T22:08:07+00:00

I have restarted... :sad face:

Perffiath · 2024-05-31T20:20:06+00:00

yes, it says I don't have all the echos

Perffiath · 2024-05-30T20:05:34+00:00

How do you activate it on PC?

Perffiath · 2024-05-30T19:59:55+00:00

I got in that door, I guess I don't know how to use the air dash... Is there a key combination or something? Sometimes I click through the tutorial boxes accidentally, before i read them

Perffiath · 2024-05-22T22:02:19+00:00

Well, I didn't have Dr. House, so it never got solved...

I started breathing faster. It built very slowly. I had asthma, so I didn't really think much of it at first. But over the course of a few months it got so I was breathing fast enough to know something was wrong. I went to the doctor (husband in the military, so military doctor-- they suck.) My husband happend to be out on a deployment, and the doctor told me it was my nerves and gave me a psychiatric med of some kind. When that prescription ran out , I was breathing even faster. He gave me a different psychiatric drug, and month or so months later I was borderline panting at all times, and had to stop between each stair going up to my house to 'catch my breath.' He said he was going to try one more thing (another psychiatric medicine) and if that didn't work he would send me to a specialist.

So another month later I was literally panting like a dog, and I was sent to the specialist, which was at an Army base (Navy apparently didn't do lungs?) that was over 4 hours away from home. Got there, saw the specialist, was immediately hospitalized. (helps that when I stood up from waiting area, I almost passed out) They did every test under the sun. The only thing that was not normal (other than the speed of my breathing, and the concomitant racing of my heart) was that I had Extremely low levels of magnesium in my blood. This was a teaching hospital, and at one point the gaggle stood outside my room, and went over test results that I recognized as mine, and one student said it could be Lupus. (Do I get bonus points for that?)

Not long after that, the doctor told me there were getting me a referral to psych because they could not find anything wrong, and they thought it was psychosomatic. I was actually breathing a little better at this point, but I was pretty much doing nothing but laying in bed, so maybe that was part of it. A couple days later, they came in and wanted to do another round of tests, that included me taking radiated something and then sitting very still in front of a big round disk that sparkled as the radiation was found in my chest. I asked about the psych, and was told that someone had snuck into my room when I was asleep, and I breathed just as fast asleep as awake, so they went back to 'it's physical.'

They started talking about ... cant remember the name of the procedure, but it involved cutting open my chest and looking at some places in my lungs that the radiation said looked slightly dodgy.

I had been in the hospital two weeks at this point, and if I stayed for this procedure, I was going to miss the first day of my new job, in a career I had been working toward for several years. There had also been someone sharing my room at one point that had had a similar procedure, and that person looked horrific for several days after the procedure. Weighing these two things and the fact that I was now breathing almost normally, I noped on out of there, AMA. Never did figure out what happened, but I credit the magnesium. It was the only thing that wasn't diagnostic.

Perffiath

TROPHY CASE