Expectant Mom Buys Kids Gifts “From The Baby”, Her Ex-Husband Pushes His Partner To One-Up Her

03 Oct 2024, 09:15 by Miglė Miliūtė, Dominyka · Bored Panda

Relationships with kids can be complex enough as they are, not to mention having to navigate parenting after a divorce.

One netizen recently took to Reddit to discuss what life as a parent entailed for her husband after he started a new family with her. The couple was expecting their first child together, hoping that the husband’s daughters from his previous marriage would be excited about meeting their sibling. But his pregnant ex-wife—the girls’ mother—had the same hopes about her yet-to-be-born child, which might have been why she bought $1000 worth of gifts for her girls “from the baby”. Scroll down to find the full story below.

This woman’s husband believed he had to spend hundreds of dollars on gifts for his daughters to keep up with his ex-wife

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Image credits: bondarillia (not the actual image)

“AITA for refusing to spend a lot of money on gifts ‘from the baby’ to my stepdaughters?”

“My husband (33m) has two daughters (9 and 8) from a previous marriage. He shares custody of them with his ex wife Mina (33f). They divorced 7 years ago. I met him 5 years ago and we’re almost 2 years married now. This is my (30f) first biological child.

Things are tense between us and Mina. I mostly stay out of discussions between them because she does not like it and ultimately, the girls don’t need more tension between their two homes for the sake of me showing up.

That doesn’t mean I don’t discuss things with my husband or that I’m uninvolved. But when it comes to communicating with their mom, I don’t insist that my voice be heard equally like the two bio and legal parents.

My husband would like me to be an equal part of it. But tension is significantly less since I made the decision not to sit in on these discussions, which I would only go to support my husband but even that was something Mina disliked. I bring this up because this is being taken into consideration on this point.

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Image credits: RDNE Stock project (not the actual image)

A few weeks before I found out I was pregnant, the girls told my husband Mina was pregnant. Mina is single, for anyone who asks, and is pregnant via a donor. They were really excited.

When we told them we were expecting they weren’t excited. They see their mom having a baby as different than me having a baby with their dad. We get along so this was a surprise. But they don’t see me as a parent so to them the baby isn’t a sibling.

While their mom’s baby has just their mom so they’re ‘real siblings’. This is something being addressed via therapy and my husband and I talking to them.

Now onto the gifts. Mina bought the girls roughly $500 worth of gifts each that they’ll get ‘from the baby’ when she’s born. My husband wanted us to do this too and he told me we need to match it at least because they already prefer their sister from mom and still don’t see their brother from us as a real sibling. Neither baby is born yet btw.

I told him I didn’t think we should spend a lot on gifts like that. My husband said he’s worried it’s just another negative for our son if we don’t. My husband’s parents found out through Mina about the gifts and they told us we better do better than that.

I told them it was an insane amount of money to spend for this. They accused me of not caring about the girls and not valuing a good relationship OR a good sibling relationship between them and my son. They think it’s unreasonable to not want to spend a lot of money in these circumstances.

AITA?”

Credits: Defiant_Customer_501

Most people didn’t think the woman was a being a jerk in the situation

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Some, however, shared a different opinion

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