A woman has sparked a debate online after revealing her mother-in-law pranked her HARD at her gender reveal party, admitting she ended up in tears over the joke-gone-wrong.
Love them or hate them, there’s no denying that gender reveals can often cause a bit of drama, whether its one of the parents being visibly gutted by the result or their elder child throwing a huge tantrum at the thought of gaining a sibling and losing the spotlight.
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But they rarely lead to actual tears, which is exactly what one woman faced when she decided to share the sex of her unborn child with family and friends.
Taking to Reddit, she explained how her mother-in-law had decided to take the occasion to play a prank on her and her husband, but that it backfired massively.
The woman, who has two sons and was pregnant with her fourth child after experiencing a pregnancy loss, said: “My MIL offered to be the gender keeper. She got the confetti cannons.
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“This is my last pregnancy so I wanted to do a small reveal with close family and friends.
“My last was during Covid and we had to skip all the cutesie things... I have 2 boys and of course would adore a little girl... I would also be happy keeping my boy mom crown!”
Her mother-in-law handed the pair a cannon each, but the woman’s husband let his go first.
“All I see is pink confetti... the sweetest surprise,” she continued.
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“My life with a daughter flashing in my mind... hugging my husband... tears shed... I was shaking happy...”
She said it was the ‘biggest best surprise’ she’d ever had after thinking she would be having a third boy.
However, this isn’t where things end.
"Soon after celebrating, my MIL interrupts,” she said.
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“Telling me I have to do mine too.
“I was so excited to see the pink confetti from my husband’s that I never set mine off.
“I am assuming it's also pink... because I'm not having twins. But instead it's blue...
“I instantly regret my initial ecstatic response. Why are there both colours now?
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“She then hands us the ' real' cannons... and they both pop blue.”
The woman went on: “Of course I can't match my previous energy. I hugged my husband and people around me and excused myself.
“And I cried. And I haven't really stopped for hours now.”
The woman said she felt ‘incredibly thankful’ for the opportunity to have any children, and knew that ‘health is number 1’.
"That isn't lost on me,” she wrote.
“But it's as if I had this space in time where my dream of a daughter came true... and I experienced the joy of having a girl join my crazy boy filled family... and now I'm grieving that.”
She said she knew she would love her son with all her heart, and wasn’t upset that she’d be having a boy ‘at all’, she just felt upset by the ‘rollercoaster’ involved in finding out.
"I feel like a jerk for being so upset... but all this happened in front of an audience,” she continued.
“I'm so embarrassed... and this happy video taken of the reveal isn't even real. It's a moment in time I got my heart broken.
“I don't understand the humor even if everything had gone according to plan? What was the point?"
In an edit, she added that her mother-in-law apologised at the end of the night, but that she still couldn’t see the humour in the stunt.
Many others could understand the woman’s frustration, describing her husband’s mother as ‘the stupidest person on the planet’.
One commented: “Who the hell thinks it's a good idea to mess with the emotions of a pregnant woman? Seriously!”
Someone else said: “During my pregnancies, I cried at a vending machine at university because it was out of peanut M&Ms, I cried at a vending machine at Walmart because it gave me a bottle of water instead of Dr. Pepper, I cried in a bookstore reading Love You Forever, I cried because I dropped a fork on the floor... Pregnancy hormones are no joke, I cried over anything. I can't believe someone would do something this thoughtless.”
A third added: “My jaw is on the floor at her ridiculousness.”
Jess Hardiman