Mom demands son leave wife in labor to come 'relieve her' of older kids; he's angry.

Giving birth to a baby can take anywhere from an hour to days, it all depends on the nature of the pregnancy, the health of the person giving birth, and the level of medical care and support they're receiving.

Suffice it to say, you cannot predict precisely how long labor will take, no matter how much you prepare. So if you're getting child care during labor, they need to know they're in it for the long haul.

In a popular post on the AITA subreddit, a woman asked if she was wrong for asking her son to come relieve her of the kids while his wife working on inducing labor.

She wrote:

AITA for asking my son to come home to help with his kids, while his wife was being induced?

I (71 female) have a son (39 male ) whose wife (36 female) gave birth to their fourth child nine months ago. All of her births have taken a long time, and she has been induced the last two times, including this one. My husband (72 male) and I were babysitting the three older kids (5 male, 4 female, and 2 female).

She was induced at eight in the morning, and by one in the afternoon, there was not much progress, if any at all. Since the kids are a handfull, I told my son he needed to come home to help for a few hours, since it looked like it would take a really long time.

Since they live half an hour away from the hospital, he could go back if anything happened, so it is not like he wouldn’t be present when the child was born, which I of course understand is a big moment for him and his wife.

My son took great offense to my request and told me to suck it up, bribe the kids with treats or whatever worked for us, and that there was no way he would leave his wife’s side, unless there was an emergency with one of the kids, like they were admitted to the hospital or something.

I told him that the kids were their responsibility, and that they couldn’t expect us to babysit around the clock if this took days. He told me we should not have said yes to babysit at all if we wouldn’t stick it out, since one never knows how long a birth will take, but that he would get someone to come and then he hung up. Three hours later someone showed up and we went home.

We offered to babysit for a few hours the next day, but our offer was declined, because the people who came to relieve us, stayed until the baby was born and my son came home. After this, they have not asked us to babysit once and hired a sitter instead, which we feel is a waste of money, since we are available for free.

We get to see the grandkids if we visit them, but they very seldom visit us, compared to before. I tried talking to both my son and DIL, but they said they felt we didn’t respect them at all since we wouldn’t “even let her give birth in peace.”

My husband and I agree that they are overreacting, since she did not, in fact, give birth until seven the next morning, 23 hours after being induced, and our son could very easily have helped us with the kids for a few hours. So AITA like my son says I am, for helping us with the kids, even if his wife was being induced, but had little to no progress?

EDIT: 1)This is my first ever post (had to repost and also delete one time, because I did it wrong apparently), 2) I have NOTHING to do with the woman making weird comments about autoimmune issues caused by a dog, 3) My DIL was NOT in active labor when I asked- they were walking around in the hospital, trying to get things started.

Edit #2: 4) We were staying at their house. 5) We only wanted some relief, we were planning to continue babysitting. Saying we only wanted to do 5 hours total is unfair.

The internet had a lot to say.

Intelligent_Ad_4163 wrote:

YTA in a major major way. You know birthing takes a long time in general but you know that your son's wife takes longer than usual. You agreed to babysit during birth knowing these things. Asking your son to leave his laboring wife for anything short of an emergency with one of his children is a gross manipulative thing to do.

Who knows why you’re on such a big power trip over your son and his marriage but it’s very obvious to anyone looking at your actions. Good for your son and his wife hiring a sitter instead of playing into your delusions.

Aylthrowaway wrote:

YTA. Why are you surprised that your son isn’t asking you to babysit anymore when you couldn’t fulfill the responsibility to begin with? It was a big moment in his life and he was, kindly, trying to support and stay by his wife’s side; for you to call him back completely defeats the purpose of getting someone to look after his kids. If you couldn’t handle it, you shouldn’t have put yourself forth as an option.

A half an hour ride is enough to miss a birth btw…it depends and differs between people. If he could come home, he wouldn’t need you there. YTA for offering yourself to help, YTA for doing a half-a$$ed job and not knowing why he’s upset and YTA for even thinking that you would be considered again for a job you couldn’t even handle the first time.

ResponsibleSpite1332 wrote:

YTA! How can you possibly think you aren’t the AHs here? Let’s recap:

You offer to watch your grandkids while your son and DIL are in labor, but after a few hours decide it’s too much for you…

So you demand that your son leave his wife, who is in labor, to come watch them.

Then you have the nerve to belittle their feelings about the whole situation.

You aren’t reliable, and have made it clear you aren’t capable of babysitting for even a few hours without causing drama. Why would they ever trust you with their kids again?

Single_Cookie_7915 wrote:

Respectfully YTA. Your son did pretty much everything right and you did pretty much everything wrong. His wife was induced and you expect him to leave her alone and 'help you' watch the kids when it was your duty which you agreed to!?

You should apologize to him and his wife and say you guys made a mistake and find a way to make it up to them.

OP is definitely TA here, hopefully she's able to truly take that feedback in from the internet and self-reflect.