Reddit Stories - My parent INSISTED that I CONCEAL my PREGNANCY and infant child, so that
Episode Date: November 18, 2025#redditstories #askreddit #aita #familydrama #parentingadvice #secrets #pregnancy #concealmentSummary: My parent INSISTED that I CONCEAL my PREGNANCY and infant child, so that I could focus on my stud...ies. But the burden of hiding such a significant part of my life took a toll on me, leading to a difficult decision that would change everything.Tags: redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, familydrama, parentingadvice, secrets, pregnancy, concealment, relationships, family, parenting, decisionmaking, personalstruggle, lifechanging, emotionalstress, supportsystem, difficultchoices, lifelessonsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6237355/support.
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I hope you enjoy this story.
My parent insisted that I conceal my pregnancy and infant child,
so that my sibling could receive all the focus at her marriage ceremony,
but when I declined, she attempted to manipulate my child.
Up for adoption without my knowledge using fake legal documents.
So my sister is getting married at the end of this year,
and I gave birth to my son about three weeks ago.
Everybody was happy about this, apart from my mother,
and I wasn't even surprised because to her,
nothing is more important than her darling baby, and that happens to be my little sister.
I obviously got pregnant a while ago, and my sister got engaged to her boyfriend of three years
when I was six months pregnant. Anybody who understands math would know that by the time my sister got
married, would have already given birth to the baby. It would have been one thing if my sister
was the kind of person who wanted a small wedding and would plan it quickly, but she wanted
an elaborate and grand wedding, which would obviously take a lot of time. She and her
fiance had been quite clear about that right from the beginning. But even then, a couple of
weeks after their engagement, my mom showed up at my house looking all worried. She told me that
she wanted me to do something about my pregnancy because she didn't want me to upset my sister.
My sister and I are not close in the slightest. She's a spoiled brat, and ever since my father
passed away a couple of years ago, we've had no contact. The only reason I even stayed in touch
with my mother after my dad's passing was because I had promised him that I would look after
her, since he didn't think my sister would be up to the task, she was just not responsible
enough. Even though my sister had always been my mom's favorite, I had tried my best to
maintain a relationship with her. That changed recently when she showed up at my house to tell
me that my sister was engaged in getting married. I thought she had just come over to share the good
news with me, but she then went on to tell me that since I was giving birth the same year she was
getting married, it would take away her limelight because obviously a pregnancy was a bigger
milestone than a wedding. I don't even understand what that was about, and I told her she was
being unnecessarily paranoid. First of all, it's not like people would skip her wedding because
I had a baby or whatever. I wasn't even going to be invited to her wedding since she hadn't even
been invited to mine, were not friends, so there was no way I could overshadow her. I wouldn't even
be there, and she and my mom had nothing to worry about. I'm not some celebrity, so I was pretty
sure that even at her wedding, nobody would be talking about me or my baby. I thought these were
all valid points, but my mother told me I needed to hide my pregnancy and my baby from everyone
in the family and all our common friends as well because she didn't want me to steal my sister's
limelight. I thought it was crazy and got into a huge fight with her, after which I didn't speak to her
anymore. I felt bad about breaking my promise to my father, but there was no other option for me
because she was obviously acting crazy. I was already pregnant and quite irritable. I just couldn't
handle her idiotic statements. She hasn't been there for anything after that. It's just been me,
my husband, and his family taking care of the baby ever since he was born. My mother wasn't even
there for the birth of the child. My husband had called her that day, but she had refused to show up
since she was out with my sister.
I'm pretty sure that even if she hadn't been out with her,
she still wouldn't have shown up because I'm just not a priority for her,
and that's the bitter truth.
If she could have abandoned her own daughter and our relationship
because she thought I was stealing the limelight from my sister just by giving birth,
then I had nothing to say to her.
Because of all these things, we had absolutely no contact,
and I was fine with it.
But then she called me up a couple of days ago.
When I didn't answer initially,
she started texting me frantically and told me to answer the call because she had to talk to me
about something very important that had happened. It was clear she had some bad news to share with
me. I really didn't want to talk to her, but I kept thinking about the promise I had made to my father
and decided to answer her. I'm really glad I did because that's how I found out she was in legal
trouble. She had tried to put my baby up for adoption without our consent, and the adoption agency
found out about it. It was a case of fraud and misrepresentation because a
Apparently she had contacted an adoption agency and falsely claimed that she had power of attorney.
She told them that both my husband and I were addicts and had been deemed unfit to take care
of our baby by the court, so as the custodial caretaker of the baby, she had decided to put
him up for adoption.
Obviously, they easily found out that all the legal documentation she provided had been fake
and immediately stopped the process.
Now they were going to take this up legally.
She was calling me because she was scared about what was about to happen next.
She had been informed that they were going to take legal action against her and that she would be served in a couple of days.
But before they could find out how to contact me and inform me, she decided to tell me about it herself so I would be able to help her out somehow.
She had been crying on the phone and begging me to help her out, but I could hardly understand how she could expect me to help her when she had done something so horrible.
I could understand that she wanted my sister to have all the limelight, but going out of her way to put my baby up for adoption, that was just disgusting.
and I think it was pretty stupid as well.
This way, it's just going to bring more attention to me
because now I plan on suing her too.
After she explained the situation to me,
I just disconnected the phone call
because I had nothing to say to her anymore.
I didn't feel bad for her at all.
In fact, I thought she deserved this and even worse.
Later that day, I was contacted by the adoption agency
so they could let me know what was going on
and I could do what was needed.
I had already spoken to my husband
after my mother's phone call, and after the adoption agency contacted us as well,
the two of us decided we were going to pursue legal action against her because there was no way
she could do something like that and hope to get away with it. We spoke to a lawyer a day after
that, and within a few days we had filed a civil lawsuit against her. The proceedings against her
are going to start soon, but given the seriousness of the situation, criminal charges have been
filed against her as well, so there's little to no scope for mediation. The best she can hope for is an
of court settlement or maybe a plea bargain for the criminal charges, but even then she might
be facing jail time. She's under house arrest right now, but she can still contact me,
and that's why she's been sending me emails one after the other, begging me to help her out
somehow. She's been apologizing and telling me that she just got carried away because she had
been very upset with my decision not to hide my baby and my pregnancy for my sister's sake.
Obviously, she knows it was a messed up thing to do, and she's really sorry for it.
I have been able to ignore her so far, but then she hit me where it hurt yesterday and reminded me that I had promised my father that no matter what, I would always take care of her, and this didn't seem like taking care of her right now.
That kind of caught me off guard because I had had that conversation with my father in private, and I didn't even know that she knew about that promise I had made.
So now, am I the asshole for suing my mother for trying to put my baby up for adoption without my consent or knowledge?
update one i have decided not to drop the civil lawsuit against her she deserves this she brought this on
herself and i'm not going to back down just because of the promise i made i had taken it very
seriously for the past couple of years ever since my father passed away and i had tried my best to
live up to the promise i made but at this moment it's just emotional manipulation emotional
manipulation at its finest which is why i almost fell for it as well
I using my father to defend herself, that's just low.
A lot of people have criticized me for even bothering to live up to the promise for so long
when it was so evident that my mother couldn't care less about me.
But I don't know if you guys have ever lost a parent, that stuff is heavy.
I lost my father to cancer, so this was literally a promise I made to him on his deathbed.
I don't know about everybody else, but that's not the kind of thing I can take lightly,
and that's why I'd been putting up with my mother for so long.
but this is crossing a line
now that I have made up my mind
nothing can make me back down
and even my husband thinks I have made the right call
I'm not even asking for a lot of money
I just want her to pay whatever I have spent on her
in the past couple of years
because I have been taking care of her
since my sister wouldn't spend even a dollar on her
to be fair to her though
she doesn't spend any money on anybody apart from herself
so it's not very surprising
it's probably the reason why my father asked me to be there for my mom
but I don't think he could have seen something like this happening at any point in the future.
I'm sure he will forgive me for this, and even if he doesn't, I still have to do it for my own sake.
I also thought it through, her having to pay back the money she owes me is not going to cost her anything.
I know for a fact that my father had not only left her the house but a substantial sum of money as well,
so she will be able to get by.
Even apart from that, she has her brother to take care of her after me.
Even if she does lose everything because of this lawsuit, it's still not going to be any of my concern
because I have tried my very best, and it's not been enough. I don't think anything will ever be
enough for her. I am done trying to be a good daughter. I'm simply a mother now, and that's my only
priority. Update 2. It's been a few weeks since my last update. We are currently in the process
of mediating since everybody wants to settle the civil lawsuit out of court. It has to
hasn't been going well so far, and we have had to terminate every session after a while because
my mother would get too emotional and would start screaming. I don't know if that's her strategy
or if she's actually losing it. Whatever the case is, it's just delaying the inevitable,
and I don't think she realizes that there is no way out of this for her. My uncle has also
reached out to me to try and convince me to back off. He has told me that the amount I'm demanding
from her as a settlement is way too huge and unfair. He has also brought up the
fact that she was the one who had raised me from when I was a baby, and this is really
ungrateful of me not to forgive her for one stupid little mistake. But that's the thing,
it was not a stupid little mistake. She had literally falsified documentation, and I don't think
if it had been a heat-of-the-moment decision, she would have been able to come up with that.
It was all premeditated, and that's the scary part because by some fluke, if the adoption agency
hadn't done its due diligence, she probably wouldn't even have been caught. The more I think about
situation, the less forgiving I feel, and I feel like no amount of money is ever going
to make up for what she did. At least I'm being kind enough to only demand whatever I had
spent on her so far, not a single dollar more. Obviously, that's not mentioned anywhere in the
paperwork, so he wouldn't know that. But even when I mentioned that to him, he still told me
it was extremely unfair of me to do so. After a while, I started getting agitated, and I really
didn't want to fight with him because so far, my uncle and I have not had a bad relationship,
and I do not want to ruin that. But since he seemed bent on doing exactly that, I started
fighting with him as well. I told him that if he cared so much about his sister, then maybe he should
just bail her out by offering to bear the cost of the settlement himself. And then we could
be done with this a lot quicker. That's when he started yelling at me and calling me all sorts of
names, and I ended the phone call because clearly there was no point in speaking to him anymore.
I don't even understand how anybody can find themselves defending her right now given the circumstances.
On one hand, I had my uncle, and on the other, I have my sister, who has been insufferable
ever since she found out about the lawsuit against our mother. I don't know why, but she has
been making me out to be the villain in this situation, claiming that I'm doing this all because I want
to get back at her and my mom for not paying me enough attention.
At least my uncle had the guts to come and speak to me directly.
She has been speaking behind my back to everybody we know,
and that's how everybody in the family has been able to find out about the lawsuit.
I really didn't want that happening because I didn't want to answer questions
since this is really personal and kind of disturbing,
and I didn't think it was necessary for me to talk to people about this.
But since she has been talking everybody's ear off about it,
people have had a lot of questions and have been reaching out to me as well.
So even though I didn't want to bring it up with anyone,
right now, I'm having to answer questions. The only reason I'm even doing it is because at some
point, I might have to get them to testify if this goes to court, so I'm just consoling myself
by telling myself that this was bound to come out at some point or the other, so better now than
later. But the bigger problem is the narrative that my sister has been setting, like I got
vindictive and stuff, and that's why I'm pursuing this legally. I don't even think she understands
the gravity of what our mother has been trying to do, and this is not some sort of sibling rivalry that
manifesting itself in the form of lawsuits. I don't even understand how somebody can be so stupid and
self-involved, but well, it's my sister, so it's not very surprising. After all, she's my mother's
true daughter. I have been speaking to the rest of my family, and it's kind of funny that this
whole thing had actually started because my mother wanted my sister's wedding to be the event
of the year. That's why she wanted me to hide my pregnancy and my baby. But now, because of her own
actions, this is going to be the family highlight for a long time to come, not just this year.
I hate to acknowledge it, but it's pretty scandalous from a gossip point of view.
If I myself had not been involved in this directly, I probably would have found it pretty
juicy as well. It sounds a bit trashy to say out loud, but it's really just poetic justice
for my sister because now not even her wedding can top something like this.
Update 3. My mother has agreed to our terms, and soon enough we will be
receiving our settlement money. But apart from that, she's still under trial for her criminal
charges right now. She and her lawyer are doing their best to get her out of it without any jail time,
but for now it's looking bleak from what I know. I have already been asked to testify by the
prosecution, and so have the people from the adoption agency, so let's see how that goes.
Apart from that, even my sister and a couple of other people from the family who are close to us
have also been contacted. It's been a couple of weeks since our last update, and
so far things have been going well for our family. We even managed to sneak in a short
weekend trip with our son so we could go and see his great-grandparents. I don't mean my
grandparents, they're not around anymore, but thankfully my husband's grandparents are still
around. When we went to see them and spoke to them about whatever was going on in our family,
they told me I was doing the right thing by stepping up for my child. I even shared the guilt
I was feeling because I had broken my promise to my father, but they told me I had nothing to feel bad
about because if my father had been around, he would have probably told me to go for it because
this is just insane. That made me feel considerably better about everything, and I guess I really
needed a change of scenery because when I came back, I started feeling really refreshed.
It had definitely been quite a distressing experience for me so far because even though my mother
and I had had differences in the past, it had never gone to these levels. In the last couple of
sessions with our lawyers, she had probably realized that screaming and terminating our sessions was not
going to make anything better and eventually it would end up going to court, and that would probably
end even more badly for her. So probably at the advice of her lawyer, she decided to behave
herself and let her lawyer do all the talking. She would hardly even look at me, and even when
she would, she would look very quickly, like she couldn't bring herself to even glance at me.
I think it's a good thing because she doesn't deserve to feel like she has the right to even
see me anymore. My uncle and my sister are still actively spreading hate against me in the
family, but that hardly matters to me because anybody who wants to be on my side is going to be
on my side nevertheless. People who just want to gossip, I'm sure they are going to stick to the
sidelines and not actively get involved, so they don't pose any threat to me. As long as that's
happening, I'm fine with whatever they're saying about me because I'm secure enough to know that it
won't make the truth change just because they're saying it. Update 4. It's been a little over a month
since my last update. My mother had agreed to my terms, and a couple of weeks ago our
settlement money finally came through. We are setting that aside for our son's future
because we can do without that money right now. We're quite happy with it because this was the
money we were owed. This is what I had been spending on my mother in the past couple of years
after my father passed away. My sister knows that, but in spite of that, she showed up the other
day and started accusing me of ruining her wedding because apparently our mother had promised
her that she would pay for part of the wedding. Now, since I had sued her and taken back all the
money, our mother won't be able to live up to that anymore, and it's all my fault, apparently.
It was crazy because literally while she was yelling at me about it, she had mentioned it herself,
that I had taken back all the money. That meant it was originally mine, so it's not like she
wasn't aware of the situation. In spite of that, she still thought it was appropriate to be
yelling at me instead of questioning why any of this was happening at all. When she showed up,
I hadn't even let her in, so I had been speaking to her at the door. The second she started
yelling at me, I slammed the door shut because I really didn't need this. I was already quite
busy with work because even though I was on maternity leave, I was still trying to work from home
so I wouldn't be overwhelmed when I rejoined. On top of that, I had to look after my son as well,
so I didn't have time for this drama. But even when I shut the door,
She didn't take the hint and continue to stand outside and scream about how unfair everything
had been for her.
After a while, when she still didn't leave, I started to get annoyed and decided to call the cops.
Within a couple of minutes, they had shown up.
While they were dragging her away, she started cursing at me so loudly that even the neighbors,
who had probably been peeking outside from behind the curtains until then, actually came out
to watch what was going on.
It was extremely embarrassing.
While she was cursing at me, she also said a bunch of concerning things about me and my child.
I don't want to repeat that, but they were pretty threatening, and I didn't feel comfortable
with it at all. I had already called my husband up and told him what was going on as soon as I had
called the cops, so he came back home earlier than usual. I told him whatever my sister had been
saying, or rather threatening us with, while the cops were dragging her away. One of the officers
had even suggested we file a restraining order because obviously there was something very
wrong going on with her, and we do think it would be a good idea to go ahead with the restraining
order because I really don't feel safe anymore. Now that I think about it, she not only knows
where I live, she knows every other way how to contact me. If she took it upon herself to try and
make me feel uncomfortable, she would easily succeed in doing so. I'm not saying she's going to
go ahead and do whatever she had threatened me with, but even apart from that, there are other ways
to intimidate a person, and I'm just scared because I'm a mother now and I don't want episodes
like this repeating again. After a really long discussion with my husband, we decided we were
going to move. I had already been planning to change my phone number and other contact info
so that people wouldn't be able to contact me without having a good relationship with me first.
It's not even just about my sister. I have had a lot of messages and phone calls from people
who only want to gossip, and it's getting really annoying at this point. So that was another reason
for me to change everything because the last thing I need is visitors who only want to talk about
this situation and gossip about it. My husband has been doing well for himself, and if we need to,
we can just ask my in-laws to help out as well. But we will definitely be moving, and we will
also definitely be filing for a restraining order against my sister because she's clearly
unhinged, and I don't want her coming around anymore. Everything has been pretty expensive for
us so far because we had to pay for our lawyer, and of course we have a newborn with us, so even
that's pretty expensive. The finances have been a bit tight recently, and with the move and everything,
it's probably going to get even more expensive for us. But when I think about my son, it seems
worth the trouble. I'm honestly just really tired of everything, but my husband and my son are
the only people who keep me going and motivated to do better. I don't think I said it enough,
but I'm really happy and lucky to have found a partner who understands me so well. I would say I'm
pretty lucky that even his family has been standing by me throughout all this. To be frank,
after my dad had passed away, it was mostly my in-laws who had been there for me, even more
than my own mother. I know for a fact that not everybody is lucky enough to have such wonderful
in-laws, so I'm very thankful for them as well. It has been a really messy and exhausting past
couple of months, and I'm just really hoping that it comes to an end soon. Update 5. Last week,
the verdict of my mother's trial finally came through, and she has been convicted on all charges.
Since she's a first-time offender, she's going to have to pay a huge fine as restitution to both
the adoption agency and me, along with several hours of community service.
She has been able to dodge incarceration, but she does have to attend court-mandated mental
health treatment in a rehabilitation facility since her lawyer made it seem like she had been going
through some psychological issues. I'm not in touch with her anymore and haven't been ever since she
agreed to the terms of our civil lawsuit and we came to a settlement. I found out about it from
a couple of family members, and well, I guess it's fair enough. I also managed to get a restraining
order against my sister soon after my last update, so that's another win for me. We are currently
in the process of moving houses, and it's a bit stressful, but we can handle it. Especially with the
money that's about to come in, it's been a huge relief for us, so we might not need to ask our in-laws
for help at all. We won't even need to dip into the settlement money that we had decided to put aside
for our son, so it's all worked out in our favor. Even though my mother got lucky legally, she hadn't
been so lucky in her personal life. I've been hearing a lot of gossip and have even been sent
screenshots of my sister's recent posts on social media. She has denounced everything that her mother
has done so far, going as far as to claim that she had no knowledge of any of this until recently
and that she doesn't agree with my mother's behavior at all and thinks that she deserves to get
convicted. That's not what she had been saying to me before everything went wrong,
before that, she had been strongly on our mother's side. From what I know, she did this because
her fiancé and her in-laws had not been comfortable with the idea of him marrying into a family
like this, which is quite understandable actually. They had been considering postponing the wedding,
which is why she decided to cut off our mother in such a public way. It sucks for our mom because all her
life she had been dedicated to my sister, and now this is what she gets. It's pretty sad,
but well deserved. I don't feel bad for her at all. Now that I'm moving, I'm going to have
nothing to do with these people, and I really can't wait.
