Pregnancy is not an easy thing and, to some extent, changes not only the life of the woman carrying the baby, but also the lives of practically everyone around her.
But at some point, requests to accommodate a new mother’s pregnancy cross a line, right? That’s exactly what seems to have happened to a pair of new parents on Reddit, and it’s sparked quite a conflict in the father’s family.
The son insisted that his mother choose another restaurant for her birthday dinner where his pregnant wife could eat.
Family outings are meant to be inclusive, of course, and most of us want everyone we care about to be there for our birthday dinner. But at the same time, what the birthday girl says is usually what happens on her special day. Few would argue that this is unreasonable.
However, this son and his wife were not affected. In his Reddit post, he wrote that his wife had “a difficult pregnancy” that came at a very inconvenient time for his family overall – in the middle of his parents’ divorce.
The end of their marriage also put a damper on his mother’s birthday. She wasn’t really in the mood to celebrate, but said a birthday dinner would be fine. And that’s when everything started to fall apart.
His mother chose a sushi restaurant, and since pregnant women are not allowed to eat raw fish, he insisted that she choose something else.
The fact that his mother and his wife don’t exactly have “the best relationship” certainly didn’t help, but when his mother announced where she wanted to go for her birthday, his wife reacted a little hastily. “My wife came to me and told me she felt like my mother did it on purpose because she knew she couldn’t go,” the father explained. That seems a bit much.
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Although it seemed “uncomfortable” to him, the father spoke to his mother about it and explained to her that his wife was not allowed to eat sushi because pregnant women were advised to avoid certain foods such as raw fish.
His mother reacted as most of us probably would have. She told him, “When you’re pregnant, you can eat rice.” This didn’t go down well and the situation escalated immediately.
His mother found the request completely inappropriate, especially since his wife could simply order something else from the menu.
It’s pretty hard to argue with this guy’s mom. You can also eat noodles, spring rolls, dumplings, and all sorts of other things that would normally be on the menu at a sushi restaurant. And according to Delish, it should be the birthday boy’s decision as to where and what to eat on his special day. Unfortunately, things aren’t as simple as they often should be.
The father was immediately offended by his mother’s response. “I asked if she seriously expected someone to eat plain rice for a meal,” he wrote. “My mother said it wasn’t my wife’s birthday, so yes, she could eat rice and have something to eat before or after.”
Hilariously, this almost exact same scenario was discussed in Bon Appetit magazine in the context of dinner parties and dietary restrictions, and the outlet actually suggested serving plain rice!
She didn’t react very kindly, but his mother was right. Aside from the fact that sushi restaurants usually offer much more than just fish and rice, from noodles and spring rolls to other Japanese dishes with fully cooked meat and fish, why should she have to adjust on her birthday?
However, he did not back down and his mother became “defensive” and insisted that she should be allowed to choose what she wanted. His sister agreed that he had gone too far and a year later it is still a point of contention between him, his mother and her new boyfriend who, upon hearing the story, strongly criticised him for the fuss he had caused.
The consensus on the Internet was that he and his wife had behaved completely inappropriately and made her pregnancy a problem for everyone.
We’ve all known couples like this who seem to think that everyone in the world should be as concerned about their pregnancy as they are. And on Reddit, people felt that’s exactly what was happening here.
One mother described a pregnancy in which many different foods made her sick. “You know what I did? I stayed home, on the couch, with the remote,” she wrote. She called the couple “super dramatic” and went on to say that the “man’s wife has main character syndrome.”
While some felt it was obvious that these two women were looking to fight, more important to most was the fact that his mother was in the middle of a horrific divorce, especially given the details of the abuse the man revealed in his comments.
However, he insisted that his mother’s divorce was “not my problem,” seemingly unaware that the opposite is also true – his wife’s pregnancy is not his mother’s problem. His indifference prompted one commenter to tell him he had “the emotional depth of a wet washcloth.”
What is obvious is that everyone in this scenario is suffering under different circumstances and lashing out in their own way. This is unfortunate, but it is human nature. Still, there is no excuse for anyone to make demands on another person’s birthday celebration, especially during such a difficult time.
The woman’s life is falling apart. Let her eat her sushi in peace.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human issues.
