Reddit Stories - Sasha left her infant in my care to pursue a CAREFREE LIFESTYLE. HOWEVER,

Episode Date: May 13, 2026

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #parenting #carefree #responsibility #infantcare #lifechoices  Summary: Sasha entrusted her infant to my care while she sought a carefree lifestyle. This decision raised concerns about her priorities and responsibilities as a parent. Balancing her desires with the needs of her child has sparked discussions about the implications of such choices on both the child and caregiver.  Tags: redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, parenting, lifechoices, responsibility, infantcare, relationships, familydynamics, personalstories, moralquestions, decisionmaking, childwelfare, carefree, adulting, support, community, adviceBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6816713/support.This episode includes AI-generated content.

I hope you enjoy this story. Sasha left her infant in my care to pursue a carefree lifestyle. However, she has returned with her recent partner insisting on reclaiming her child, so I presented her with these documents and she freaked out. For the past five years, I, 32F, have been raising my husband's 32M, niece Abby, alongside my own children, as our daughter. And now, all of a sudden, my sister-in-law Riley, 25F, is back, wants me to give up custody of her so she can have her daughter back and complete her family.

For the record, she was the one who had given up her baby in the beginning and now that I'm refusing to let her take over, she's making a huge stink about it. It's become such a huge deal that I've actually started doubting myself. All of this started five years back when Riley got pregnant with her boyfriend at the time, but they were not serious about each other. She decided to keep the baby and he decided to leave her, and that was that. Since my husband and and I are not particularly close with her, we were not in the pregnancy. And then, about two weeks after the baby was finally gone, my mother-in-law showed up at our house and told me that she wanted me to look after the baby for a couple of weeks. She said that Riley wanted to resume

college since she was 20 at the time and had to drop a year because of pregnancy. They told me that they were going to look for apartments near her campus and would be back in just a few days, so they needed my help to take care of the baby since they couldn't rely on anyone else. My husband and I love kids, and by then, we already had our son. So we agreed because we thought it was just going to be a couple of days, but then, they literally disappeared for almost two months. We tried calling them, texting them, and even contacting them through other people, but there was just no way that we could reach them.

When my mother-in-law finally came back, she told me that Riley had decided to give up her baby and now, she expected me to raise her. Apparently, Riley had left the country and that's what they had spent the past two months making arrangements because she wanted to lead a free-spirited lifestyle, whatever that means, and being bogged down by a baby that's not her thing anymore and she had realized it a little too late. My husband and I were obviously shocked and furious because, at the time, we hadn't been planning for a second baby. We already had a two-year-old toddler to deal with, we couldn't handle a second child and this was something really unethical. My mother-in-law

said that she herself would have adopted her grandchild, but unfortunately, since she She had lost her husband a couple of years ago, she didn't think it would be wise for her to do so because she was getting old and it would also be pretty expensive. Those were just excuses, though, and my husband decided to cut her out of our life back then. However, after giving it some thought, we decided to keep our niece with us and raise her as our own daughter. We obviously had no contact with Riley either and since she had basically abandoned her daughter, we spoke to a lawyer about how we could go ahead and legally adopt Abby. It took more than a year. It took more than a year more than a year and a lot of paperwork, but eventually, we were able to legally adopt Abby after

having Riley's parental rights terminated on grounds of abandonment and since then, she has been a part of our family. No questions asked. Then, my husband and I finally had another daughter two years back and our family was complete. We've been raising all three of our children together and we have had to be very careful with our finances but it's been totally worth it. And yet, in spite of doing all this, Riley thinks she is entitled to ask for her baby back now. About two weeks ago, she showed up at our doorstep with her new fiancé, telling us that she was planning on getting married now, and since she did not plan on putting herself through a pregnancy one more time,

she just wanted Abby back as if Abby was a dress she had lent me and not an actual human child. I asked her to give me a minute, got the paperwork from the adoption, and then showed it to her before slamming the door shut in her face. After that, she kept screaming at me from outside the door. but I had already done what I had been waiting for years to do. And luckily, when this had happened, my husband had been out with the children so they didn't even have to witness any of this. Anyway, after I slammed the door shut and she started screaming at me, I told her that I was

going to call the cops if she didn't leave and then she finally left. I thought that this would be the end of it because obviously, I had legally adopted Abby so she really couldn't do anything about this now. But she's been playing the victim card and trying to make my husband and I to be the bad guys right now and somehow, the family is actually falling for it. That day, when my husband finally came back home with the kids, I told him everything about what had happened and we had mutually decided that we were not going to let this affect us. But the situation has changed now because literally every single person from his family is telling us that what we are doing is not

right and that we don't have the right to keep a mother and her daughter apart just because we are attached to Abby. I don't know how to explain to them that I'm not attached to Abby just because she's a child and I've been raising her for five years. I feel the same way about her that I feel for the rest of my kids because I am her mother, regardless of the biological connection. And I can say the same for my husband too, so we have been doing our best to defend ourselves, but it doesn't help that even my mother-in-law, who had actually left Abby with us years ago and explained the situation to us, isn't on our side and actually believes that we should return Abby to her mother. But I guess that's just out of pettiness because, for the past five years, we haven't been in touch with her since

we had cut her out of our lives for being sneaky about the whole thing, since it had been quite unethical. Her behavior, at least we can explain it because she's just being petty and vengeful, but the rest of my husband's family, I don't know how to explain that. The messages have been pouring in since last week after Riley made a post about the incident. In the post, she said that she had made a mistake five years ago by abandoning her daughter, but now that she wants to rectify that mistake, we are not allowing her to do so, and are keeping her away from her own daughter. The tone of the post had been pretty emotional and I don't know how, but she managed to do people into believing that she was the victim here. And since then,

my husband's family hasn't wasted a single day, they've been calling us all sorts of names, telling us that what we are doing is ruthless and that we are destroying Abby's life. It's gotten to the extent where we are actually doubting ourselves and I feel like I'm going crazy. I know that she cannot do anything legally, which is probably why she is coming after us like this. Anyway, what do you guys think about this? Ida for refusing to return my niece to my sister-in-law after raising her for five years? Edit, I'm pasting the post here for anyone who wanted to see what hi, everyone. This is Riley and I want to talk to you guys about something really important today. It's going to be about my daughter. I know a lot of you are probably not even aware.

that I have a daughter, and it's partly my own fault. I had left my daughter behind here when I moved away from life as I knew it five years back. I wanted to be free from all the expectations that everyone had for me, I wanted to start a new life for myself, and to some degree, I have been successful in doing so. I have found a wonderful man for myself. Jacob loves me like nobody else and soon enough, he's going to be my husband. When I told him about my daughter, he was ready to accept her too because that would complete our family. So I approached my sister-in-law, Michelle, who had been raising my daughter for the past five years. Unfortunately, she has taken this opportunity to claim my daughter as her own and is refusing to let me take my daughter back from her.

I am helpless because she has transferred custody of my daughter to herself and I don't think I'll be able to do anything about this legally. So I need all the help and support I can get from everyone here to bring my baby back home. I know that it was my mistake that I trusted her in the first place, but honest to God. I had never expected something like this to happen. I had thought that she was just going to take care of my baby in my absence and whenever I was ready, I would get to be a mother to my child again. But that chance has been taken away from me and I can't even begin to explain how much it hurts. Please support me here. I have been driving myself crazy by overthinking what's going on but after reading through the comments, I realized that I was actually being crazy by entertaining these people.

There is obviously something very wrong with my husband's family and it was stupid of us to care about what they were saying. Whatever they say, it doesn't matter because they don't have a legal leg to stand on. The facts remain that my sister-in-law had abandoned her baby, which is why we ended up adopting Abby. If she had been involved in her life, I don't even think the courts would have allowed this to happen. She's been extremely manipulative and clever with her words, which is why so many of my family members have come out in her support. But no matter how much she tries to distort and twist the truth in her favor, we know the facts. We had been blocking people initially, but after that, it got too overwhelming, and we started doubting ourselves, so we stopped for a while. However, we are back to

blocking people now. And just to be on the safe side, we have also spoken to our lawyer and in case she tries to create more drama, we're going to be slapping her with a defamation lawsuit. Right now, we are They're letting it go because it honestly doesn't matter what a bunch of losers from my husband's family think about us. However, if she tries to go public with this, we're going to have to take serious legal action against her. It's actually pretty insane that any of this is happening and people are actually on her side right now, but well, weirder things have happened as well. Update 2. So it's been a week since my last update and two days back, for some reason, Riley decided to show up at our house again. I don't know why she's.

she came by this time, my husband and my kids were at home, so I did not even open the door. As soon as I saw that it was her standing outside, I asked her to leave, and I literally had my phone in my hand to call the cops if she refused. So far, we had been blocking all the relatives who had been texting us in favor of Riley, and we also blocked her everywhere, so she wouldn't be able to contact us. Basically, we had no idea what had been going on with everyone else because, as they say, ignorance is bliss. I guess that's why she took the trouble to show up in person and when I told her to leave, she told me that she just wanted to see Abby just once. After all, Abby was her biological daughter, and if she couldn't take her with her, the least I could

do for her was allow her to catch a glimpse of how she looked now. Her voice sounded like it was about to crack, like when people are about to cry, but I was not falling for that. I told her that I was not going to allow her to even see Abby anymore because she had lost that right when she left her with us for a free-spirited lifestyle. Besides, after all the rubbish that she had posted online and the way she had sent her entire family after us, she had no right to even speak to us. So I gave her one last warning to leave and instead, she started begging me not to do this. But I didn't care, I told my husband what was going on, so he took the kids to the nursery and I called the cops. We just didn't want the kids to get to know that any of this was happening, so he played with them while I handled

the cops and she was escorted off our property. She went away quietly, without any drama, which was quite suspicious because I really didn't think that was going to happen since while we were waiting for the cops to arrive, she kept begging me to let her see her daughter and promised me that she would go away and never bother me again if I just let her see Abby once. Anyway, after she left, my husband and I had a talk, but unfortunately, we realized that we couldn't stop her from showing up. We could file a restraining order against her, but that's the most that we could do and even then, we couldn't ensure that she would never show up again. Moving away was not happening, especially in this economy when rent is so expensive.

Luckily, my father-in-law had bought us this house and it also meant a lot to us sentimentally, so we didn't want to move. We just have to deal with it, I guess. Update 3, hey, so I received a lot of comments on my last post calling me Heartless. all because I didn't allow Riley to see Abby, and it's fascinating how people are calling me heartless right now, even though it was really who had abandoned her baby and left to move to another country, so she could live freely. And then after that, she's come back after five years without any contact in between, with no concern for her baby's well-being and now, all of a sudden, she can't wait to be a mother again? Not to mention how idiotic her behavior has been ever since

she came back, how she has been playing the victim and sending her relatives after me. It's really difficult to feel sorry for somebody like that, and I really don't feel sorry for her at all. Besides, I had thought of all the possibilities and after that, I had declined. The biggest thing that I have been worried about is that she might have blurted something out in front of Abby and then, I would have to explain to a five-year-old thing that she has no business knowing at the moment. It's just not necessary to create all the drama and that's why I asked her to leave. I don't think I'm the heartless one here at all and whoever left those comments really needs to re-evaluate what they think.

Anyway, now that that is out of the way, I want to talk about what happened recently. And I think after hearing me out, whoever had been calling me, heartless for not letting Riley see Abby will change their mind too because she's obviously unstable. Last week, I refused to let her see Abby, and a couple of days ago, she decided to take matters into her own hands and started stalking us. At first, neither my husband, nor I were suspicious, but then, we started noticing that every time we would go out, there was the same car trailing us all the time. It didn't take much for us to figure out that it must have been Riley and a couple of days later, we decided to confront her. We pulled over while she was driving behind, went to her

car and demanded that she come out and when she did, I read her the riot act in the middle of the street. I didn't even care about who was watching us. I just wanted her to know that what she was doing was messed up and that I was going to file a restraining order against her because she was unstable and obviously did not deserve to be around Abby. She was quiet for the first couple of minutes, but when I told her that she did not deserve to be around Abby, she started yelling back at me and told me that she was going to make sure that she took custody of her daughter away from me. She was really getting on my nerves, so I called her psychotic and told her to get off our backs. And then, she slapped me and it happened so suddenly that I didn't even see it coming.

After she slapped me, she immediately started apologizing to me with tears in her eyes, but I was done. Physical violence was where I drew the line, and add to that the stalking, the constant harassment, and everything else, I knew that I had to speak to a lawyer. My husband and I were obviously pretty shocked, and we were headed to the grocery store at the time, but we didn't end up going. We headed back home and even when we were getting back into our car, she followed us to the car and was begging for forgiveness all that while. Eventually, my husband had to tell her that if she tried to follow us back home, he would make sure that she faced some terrible consequences. So she didn't follow us back and when we got home,

I immediately called my lawyer up and explained everything to him. Once that was done, he reassured us that he would be preparing the paperwork to file a restraining order against her. Just be on the safe side. He also told us to report Riley and press charges against her. So a couple of minutes later, after speaking to our lawyer, we called the cops and explained everything to them, and since it was just a slap, my husband, and I had thought that she would be let off with a warning. But then, when we told them about the stalking and everything, they decided to press charges against her, so that's definitely going to come in handy when we are trying to get that restraining order.

We haven't heard from Riley ever since, and we are hoping to keep it that way because after everything that has happened, I really just don't even think that we have anything to talk about. We never did in the first place, but until now, we had been trying to keep things civil. She hadn't been doing that, but we just didn't want drama in our lives and we figured that if we kept ignoring her, she would take the hint and leave us alone, but clearly that's not what has happened. That's on us, we should have nipped this in the butt instead of trying to play nice at all. Our children are our first priority, and we are just hoping that this doesn't affect them in any way. Until now, it really hasn't, apart from them just constantly asking us if we are fine because

I guess we've been a little quieter than usual. However, we are trying to fix that and not let them know what we're going through because keeping them happy is our main goal right now. Everything's been incredibly stressful for both my husband and I, but I really do hope that things get better soon and yes, please just keep praying for the best for us now. Update 4, hi, it's been a month since my last update, and a couple of days back, we finally managed to get the restraining order through. It's been a huge relief because we've been pretty stressed out about this whole thing. She also got several hours of community service for stalking and slapping me. We haven't exactly heard from her, but I know.

know that my mother-in-law is very upset about this. Yet again, instead of being upset at the right person, she's upset with us. She thinks that it's our fault that I ended up getting slapped that day. And she has even reached out to my parents to communicate that to them. She thinks that I'm heartless and if I had just let Riley see her daughter one time, none of this would have happened. She called my parents a couple of weeks ago and she told them that I'm the one who pushed her daughter into doing something like this. And right now, things are going pretty badly for Riley. I don't know how any of this is my fault and even if it technically was my fault, wouldn't my husband be at fault too? He didn't say anything about him and I really can't think of any

reason to involve my parents in this. I honestly don't understand why that woman has it for me, or rather, why my husband's family seems to hate me so much. I have never been anything but nice to them, but I guess that's just not enough for some people. Thankfully, she had only spoken to my parents on the phone and hadn't bothered them in person. So they had the liberty to hang up whenever they felt like they had had enough. So they only had to hear her out for a couple of minutes before disconnecting the phone call and even after that, she sent them a bunch of messages, calling them rude and mannerless and saying that she finally understood where I got it from.

I think it's really crazy that she's going to such lengths just to humiliate me, knowing that I've not done anything wrong. I'm sure that she's not that delusional in reality because when I used to be on speaking terms with her in the past, she seemed like a pretty reasonable person. Anyway, if this is what she's choosing to do, that's her call. All is going to do is make sure that her son never speaks to her and she doesn't have any access to her grandkids. But I hardly think that's going to affect her because she's already spent five years without them. I think she can go five more. Eventually, though, she is going to realize that she's not getting anything out of Riley and she's going to come crawling back to us and then we'll talk. Anyway, my parents didn't seem to care

and they just wanted to inform me that this was happening behind my back. I felt a little insulted, and I felt like I had to apologize to my parents, but they just dismissed it because obviously they understood that this was not my fault. So that was all done and dusted and now we just hope that this doesn't put ideas into my mother-in-laws or Riley's head and they don't go talking to other people. So far, they have only stuck to trying to emotionally manipulate my husband's family, but if they take this public and start talking to our friends or co-workers, that would be pretty humiliating for us. We can't exactly do anything to prevent it from happening, but we are just hoping that it doesn't. But at least we got the restraining order, so that's been a huge relief.

Now, if she tries to show up, we're just going to get her arrested and that'll put an end to all of this. Since that's done, my husband and I are going to try and focus more of our time on our kids. I guess we've been spending a little less time with them ever since Riley came back into our lives and so, we have decided that we are going to take a vacation. We've already started planning for it and spoken about it at work as well. We're pretty excited because I think we deserve this break after all that we have been through as a family. So well, let's see how that goes and I think that's about it for me right now. So it's been a couple of months since my last update and after I came back home from vacation

with my kids, we felt a lot lighter, so I hadn't exactly been active here. Anyway, last evening, I received a message from a number I did not recognize, but after reading through it, I realized that it was Riley's fiancé who had shown up with her the first day that everything started. I was truly very confused as to why he was texting me but then, I read his message. and well, long story short, he dumped Riley and he just wanted to text and apologize to us. It was actually Riley who had shared my contact info with him at first because she wanted him to text me when I had blocked her but he thought that it would be taking it too far,

so he never did. Up until recently, he had been sympathizing with Riley because he thought that I was wrong but there had always been a little doubt about it in his mind. And I don't know what changed all of a sudden because he didn't mention anything in his message, but he said that recently, he had had the realization that Riley was the one who was wrong here and he didn't want to be a part of something so messed up anymore. So he had to dump her and he was moving back to his hometown in a couple of days, but before that, he just wanted to apologize to me for all the inconvenience that Riley had caused me. It was actually pretty sweet of him because I didn't think that he had been part of any of this, as far as I knew, but he was literally just apologizing

for not standing up for me and doing the right thing. I showed it to my husband and he was pretty surprised about it as well but then, we just told him that it was fine and wished him all the best and that was it. Then, this morning, we heard from a couple of friends that Riley had been crying about this on social media. Apparently, she had posted a video, saying that she had been dumped by her fiancé who had been with her for the past three years and it was all my fault. Again, I don't understand how any of this is my fault, but I guess this is just how she and her mother roll. Whatever goes wrong in their lives, just blame me for it. Whatever, that video was obviously posted so people would sympathize with her and give her attention

and they did end up doing so because our friend told us that the comment people hating on me and telling Riley that she deserved better. They were painting her to be some tragic figure who had been through so much but well, I guess we also know the truth about her. Anyway, it doesn't matter because she's getting all her karma right now. Update 6. my last update was just a couple of weeks back and I didn't think I'd be back here so soon but what I found out is hilarious. Our friends told us that right now, Riley and my mother-in-law are having a

very public fight on social media. Apparently, after Riley was dumped, she chose to blame her mother too in one of her videos. I guess after blaming me for a couple of days, she realized that I was not going to respond so she chose to start blaming her mom. She claimed that apparently her mother was the one who had made her give up her baby to me and now, she was equally at fault for the situation at hand. Her fiancé leaving her is apparently everybody else's fault now and it's hilarious how she's dodging accountability. I guess she is in denial right now. But she can't run away from the truth someday she'll have to accept her own faults. Until then, though, she can definitely go on blaming her mom for everything because the way they are fighting online right now is hilarious.