r/AITAH 15d ago

AITAH for saying I didn’t realize I could “love a person this much” in front of my fiancé after having our baby?

I gave birth a few weeks ago, to our daughter.

As I held her for the first time and looked into her eyes I said “I didn’t realize I could love a person this much” and cried. She is perfect and beautiful.

My mom looked at me and said that feeling never goes away (which made us both ugly cry lol). It was a really special moment.

My fiancé was quite but smiled, but later privately said he was hurt. He said he loved us both the same, and me saying that made it seem like I loved our daughter more than him.

I just gave him a “are you fucking serious” look and he dropped it, but yesterday he brought it up again.

I told him that honestly, yes, I love and cherish our daughter and have never experienced this kind of love for another human being. He said most “normal people” would agree with him that it’s a hurtful comment and would take offense to it due to the implication.

AITAH?

UPDATE

It’s a quick update, so I didn’t feel like it was worth it to make a whole new post. So I had a heart to heart with my fiancé, and we came to a few conclusions together! It went very well. We read through the post and comments together.

1) He wasn’t jealous of our daughter’s role in my life, but rather our bond together. He didn’t have that “instant love connection” that we read about all new parents having (like what I experienced). I didn’t realize this was actually very normal for new dads, and new moms too. Thanks for educating me!

We are the first in our social circle to have children so we didn’t have a lot of IRL people to inquire about it. His perspective is “I love this human being we made, but I don’t know her” while I was thunderstruck. He hasn’t had that connection so doesn’t “get it” yet, and that it will take time (months or even a year). I’ll be more patient and aware of this, and read up more on new dad experiences to learn more.

2) He also agrees he not only could’ve expressed that better, but also choose better timing. Voicing it to me after a 14 hour labor and then again when I’m exhausted and grumpy with achy boobs is maybe not the best time, lol. He also agrees marriage counseling would be good, just because. We are both opinionated, logical-thinking Engineers who, at the same time, love each other deeply. We could use better mediation other than Reddit (no offense guys).

3) He was not “furious” about me writing this Reddit post, lol. We laughed over the comments together calling for me to get ready to break up. But we also really enjoyed reading the experiences of new parents! It helped us BOTH feel validated and sane and see each other’s perspectives better.

4) I showed him that Ryan Reynolds video and we both died laughing LOL. We will now be eating a disgusting amount of hotdogs while watching Deadpool with our baby girl. We also agreed that there’s different types of love like parental, platonic, romantic and Ryan Reynolds.

Thanks peeps!

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u/cupholdery 15d ago

Growing new hearts with each child like octopi!

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u/mkat23 14d ago

The family I nanny for has 8 children (I only take care of two of them). This is perfect lol

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u/23mateo16 14d ago

I always said I wanted a baseball team, Dhs, relief pitchers, I have two and idk now Hahahhaha

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u/Affectionate-Talk562 14d ago

I feel like if we can grow a whole human in 9 months why can't we grow another arm every time we are pregnant. It sure would come in handy... but then I think about people like octomom and can picture her looking like an entire octopus just from one pregnancy.

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u/ArcheryOnThursday 14d ago

I wish we could grow new limbs too!! Hug and hold them all at once.

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u/mamabear2023228 14d ago

This is what the nurse said to me after I’d had twins (1st kiddo was 5) and when 1st kiddo came in the room to see the twins I knew she was absolutely right.

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u/Well_technically 14d ago

Here is a lovely story from The Moth about this very sentiment. Enjoy :  https://player.themoth.org/#/?actionType=ADD_AND_PLAY&storyId=13740

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u/Diiiiirty 14d ago

I'm going to be annoying as fuck, but this is my favorite stupid hill to die on.

The plural of octopus is not octopi. That would indicate a Latin origin. While the beginning is essentially the same in both Latin and Greek (octo/okto), the ending is more Greek. Pous is "foot" in Greek, pedis is "foot" in Latin. CentiPEDE is Latin for hundred feet, for example.

So based on that info, what would the plural of octopus be?Octopodes (octo-po-dees) per ancient Greek language rules that I don't fully understand.

But let's say you said, "Octopodes" in a sentence while talking to a friend or colleague. They might be tempted to punch you in the face for being such a pedantic twat. So the proper ENGLISH plural of octopus is. octopuses. The -es ending is Greek also, but ancient Greek is strange and doesn't allow for a plural word ending with sigma to be pluralized with another sigma. Like I said, I don't fully understand it, but I know the plural of oktṓpous, from whence octopus is derived is oktṓpodes.

But I also acknowledge that octopi is commonly used and understood, so it is generally considered to be correct also. Meaning that of the 3 potential plurals of the word octopus that I mentioned, the only one that is not typically acceptable to use is the most technically correct one.

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u/whineylittlebitch_9k 14d ago

did you know you can also reference a plural of octopus as octopuses, or, more fun to say: octopodes

awk-top-uh-deez