'My husband refused to help with the baby

Aug 06, 2023

A stay-at-home mum was so angry with her husband for not helping her with the baby during a work call she made him regret it. But now she's been slammed by other parents, who said she was in the wrong

A mum has been slammed for deliberately ruining her husband's work call because he wouldn't help with their eight-month-old baby. People have argued that even though her baby was crying, he couldn't just drop everything to help - because she couldn't expect that if he was in the office.

The woman was looking for sympathy when she took to forum Reddit to explain the situation, and no doubt didn't get the reaction she'd hoped for. She explained that she's a stay-at-home mum, and her husband works from home, and does "take breaks to play with the baby and helps occasionally". She never usually asks for help as she's aware he's busy - but this one occasion she classed as an "urgent" situation.

In a recent post on the website, she explained: "Today however, at eight months old, it was the first time I felt like it was urgent. Baby is starting to eat solids so I fed him then set him down to play while I pump, I thought he would be fine since he just ate. He was not fine, two mins in he starts screaming his head off. He is starting to recognise that the pump makes milk and he wants the milk which is adorable and frustrating."

The mum wanted to give the baby some milk while she was pumping, but quickly realised she had no clean bottles. She then texted her husband to ask if he could clean a bottle for him, which she said would "literally take less than five minutes". The husband was on a work call and said he couldn't because he was busy.

In the post, she continued: "So my baby cried and cried for 10 mins until I had enough". As revenge, she decided to unplug the modem to the internet, and then go and clean the bottle herself. The mum had to wait until the baby was asleep before she could pump again. She continued: "I was so angry that I unplugged the modem, and ruined his meeting anyway. He was obviously upset ran downstairs to plug it back in and said he couldn't believe I would do that and sabotage him, I couldn't believe he would ignore his crying baby.

"So many of his coworkers have children and they ask for a five min break, it's not that serious. Again, I have never asked him to do something like this for eight months!!! I think that's actually incredible of me." In the comment section, the mum received a lot of backlash, as many said the move to halt her partner's work call was not the right way to handle the situation.

One person wrote: "Your baby wasn't hurt. He wasn't starving. He was communicating a want, not a need since he just ate, which is fine, but you know what else is fine? Letting him cry for a few minutes. Your reaction was very immature and could have put your husband in a bad position with his job."

Another agreed, claiming: "You're a stay-at-home-mum, so caring for your child is your job during his work hours. You expected him to stop doing his job to come do yours. Urgent is an injury or some other safety risk; it's not the inconvenience of stopping pumping to manage your child."

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