rSlash - r/AITA I Received a Replica Doll of my Dead Baby

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

0:00 Intro 0:08 Terrible gift 3:25 Complaints 7:57 Question 10:26 Bees 12:15 Sleepover 14:27 Rent Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You gotta try breakfast at A.W. You gotta try breakfast at A.A.W. And what better way than with a delicious pratt organic coffee? Starting with just $1 all day, every day now until December 31st. You gotta try breakfast. I'm participating in A&W locations in Ontario. Welcome to R-slash, Am I the Butthole, where O.P.'s relative gives her a doll that resembles her recently deceased baby. Am I the butthole for telling my sister-in-law that the reborn baby she gave me was

disturbing and inappropriate? I recently lost one of my twins. He was six months old. I don't really want to go into the details, but it's been extremely difficult for me and my husband. It hasn't even been two months, so I'm still very much grieving. Before this happened, my sister-in-law and I were actually really close. She loved my boys and was always around them, so I know she loved my son who passed away. I'm not questioning that. Yesterday, my husband's mom had a small birthday party at her house. It was basically just immediate family, kids, grandkids, etc. At the party, my sister-in-law stood up and started talking about how we should hold our children close because you never know when the last time you'll get to hold them will be. In the middle of the speech, she handed me a reborn baby doll. The doll looked

almost exactly like my baby. I mean, really looked like him. It wasn't a random baby doll. This was made to resemble him. And my sister-in-law even had one of the toenails painted because I used to paint one of their toenails to tell them apart. Like, what? She handed me the doll and basically said, so you can have both your babies. My flabbers were gasted. I took the doll in the moment because I didn't want to make a scene at their mom's birthday party, but I was extremely uncomfortable. I pulled her aside and told her that I thought that what she did was weird and distasteful and that it really upset me. I asked her why she would give me something like that when my baby had literally just died. She got mad and started saying

things like, you think I'm trying to be funny? You think I didn't love my nephew? She basically acted like I was accusing her of not caring about my son. She also said something along the lines of, Who do you think you are? We accepted you. That's not what I was saying at all. I know she loved my son. I know that she was trying to do something for me, but that doesn't change the fact that receiving a realistic doll that looks like my dead baby in front of my entire family during a speech about losing children was extremely upsetting to me. I never took the doll home. I left it there. Now we're not speaking. I understand that everyone grieves differently and maybe some people would find something like this comforting. But I personally found it disturbing and painful,

especially considering how recent my son's death is. O.P., you could not pay me to do what your sister-in-law did. Someone says, hey, R-slash, here's $1,000, go give this replica did... Oh, gosh, even talking about it is really uncomfortable. Go give this replica baby to a grieving mother who just lost their child. Um, no thanks. Keep your $1,000. I'm not going to do that.

That feels like an act of terrorism. I do suppose there's some percentage of mothers who would find this very sweet and comforting, but I would have to guess that's way less than 50%. I think that to most moms, this feels cruel. Opie, I'm giving you zero out of five buttholes. Am I the butthole for not wanting my in-laws to stay at our house anymore? After overhearing my father-in-law complained that I was still in bid at 9.15, I'm married, and my in-laws are currently visiting and staying in our home. We also have two toddlers, so our mornings are already busy and exhausting. I generally get along my in-laws, particularly my in-law. But this morning, something happened that has me seriously

reconsidering whether I want them staying with us anymore. Some important context. I'm currently dealing with a fairly serious medical condition. Doctors found a mass on my right adrenal gland. Imaging couldn't definitively determine what it is, and I'm now scheduled to have the adrenal gland and tumor surgically removed in September. I've also had episodes involving high blood pressure, rapid heartbeat, headache, sweating, shaking, etc. So this has been physically and emotionally exhausting. Note, the in-laws know about this. This morning, I was awake around 5 a.m. with the toddlers and was up and moving around pretty early. Around 7.20 a.m., after my mother-in-law got up, I told her I was tired and asked if she minded if I went back to lay down. She was completely

fine with it, so I went back to bed. At around 9.15 a.m., I overheard my father-in-law arguing with my mother-in-law because I was still in bed. From what I could hear, he was upset that I wasn't up and out of the bedroom yet. He was also complaining that I hadn't cooked breakfast for them, and suggesting that maybe I shouldn't have stayed up so late. My mother-in-law was actually defending me. Eventually, I came out and said good morning, but the tension in the room was thick enough that I could immediately tell something had happened. It really bothered me. I'm already tired and not feeling well, and dealing with a potentially serious health issue has made stress harder on me physically. Afterwards, I became extremely overwhelmed and jittery,

and my heart started racing like I'd consumed a ton of caffeine. I eventually went back to my bedroom just to get away from everything and calm down. I would never tell my husband that he couldn't see or visit his parents. That's his family, and I don't want to intervene with that relationship. I'm also not saying they could never visit us, but I'm seriously considering making over-reesome. night visits a thing of the past. They could stay in a hotel or other accommodations when they come, and my husband is completely free to visit them whenever he wants. Part of me feels guilty because they're

family. But another part of me feels like I should be able to sleep, rest, or simply exist in my own home without worrying that a house guest is judging what time I get out of bed, or expecting me to cook breakfast for them, especially while I'm sick, caring for two toddlers, and preparing for surgery. And honestly, even if I weren't sick, I'm struggling with the idea that another adult staying in my house thinks that I should be out of my bedroom by a certain time and responsible for preparing their breakfast. So am I the butthole for deciding that after this visit, I don't want my in-laws staying overnight in our home anymore? You know, staying at someone else's house and say, hurry up and get out of bed to make me breakfast is insanely rude. I will say though, O.P., you have a clear ally in the mother-in-law.

I would just take her aside, say that you overheard the conversation and you feel uncomfortable, and I'm quite confident that she will whip her husband into shape. Also, O.P. doesn't really mention the husband. I guess he was probably out of the house by then, maybe at work or something, I don't know. I would also recruit the husband. Hey, get your dad in line. That was super rude. O.P., you get zero out of five buttholes. I'm giving the dad one out of five buttholes. Also, O.P. posted an update. I let my husband know what happened when he got home, and his immediate reaction was to call his dad a jackass and go talk to my in-laws. At the time, I was still trying to rest and calm myself

down after having what felt like a panic attack. My husband told his parents that I'd overheard the argument, that it caused me unnecessary stress, and that he especially didn't appreciate his dad arguing with my mother-in-law in front of our children. Honestly, I hadn't even taken into account that my kids were right there when the argument happens. Overall, my husband is taking a pretty diplomatic position. Going forward, when his parents visit, he plans to take time off work, so the responsibility for hosting them isn't falling on me. He also apologized for putting me in this situation because he genuinely didn't anticipate that his dad would be, in his words, a sassy jackass. Am I the butthole for ending a date after a harmless question? Last night, I met a guy off

the apps for a dinner date. We arrived at the restaurant, exchanged pleasantries, and ordered our drinks and food. After about five minutes, he leans over and asks me, are you a man? I was shocked. For context, I am very much a woman. Long hair, curvy, was wearing a cute dress, makeup, the whole deal. However, I'm also about 178 centimeters in height, which is about six feet tall. No, it's not, it's 5'8. What? He swore that he wasn't trying to offend me. You were just so tall for a woman, he said. Still, I felt like I'd just been slapped. So I politely excused myself from the table, paid for my drink, canceled my food order,

wished him a good rest of the night, and left. At the time, I was upset and convinced the man was an idiot. Now that I've had time to cool down, I'm wondering if I overreacted. His tone wasn't negative or accusatory, and there's nothing wrong with being trans. Am I the butthole for immediately bailing? Yeah, this top comment, Jiris says exactly what I was thinking. Just for all the self-conscious tall girls out there, I'm on this guy's side. I've never in my life seen a big woman and thought, that's got to be a man.

Usually my first thought is, wow, tall woman, right? Isn't that what everyone else does? And you know, I'm a dumb American who doesn't understand the metric system. So at first I thought Opie was like super tall, but then when I actually Googled it and did the math, 5-8 isn't even all that tall. The average size, what is the average height of woman? Average height of a woman. I think it's five, I think it's five four.

Okay, five foot three and a half inches. So five eight isn't even like super far out of the average height. I could see being surprised by a woman's height at around like six feet, but certainly not enough to be like, oh, that's got to be a dude. So this guy is weird and dumb, but outside of that, it honestly doesn't matter how weird or dumb or nice the other guy is. O.P., this is a first date. You can leave a first date for any reason, including no reason. Even if the guy just rubs you wrong for like half a second, it's no big deal. That's the whole point of a first date. Some people in the comments are saying that he wasn't actually curious. It's just a form of negging, which I don't know, maybe it is.

Who knows, O.P., regardless, if you don't want to date the guy, you don't have to date the guy. It's really that simple. You get zero out of five buttholes. Am I the butthole for keeping my bees despite my new neighbor? Hi, I've gotten a new neighbor at my family's weekend home. They use their property all year round, and us mostly on weekends or during holidays. Last weekend, the neighbor wife asked me what the second building on my property is with the colorful front. The building is my bee house, and the colorful things are the hive fronts. She got sour and told me they have to go as she has a terrible allergy to bees. I have the hives in the fourth generation, and I've invested a lot of cash in new equipment,

New electric honey extractors, several new stainless honey buckets, and rebuilt most of the old units for new insulation, new paint, and a lot of new frames, as the old ones were about 60 years old. For us, it's a pure hobby farm, as we have only seven beehives and harvest about 300 to 400 kilograms of honey yearly. Everything is permitted and zoned as a farm. We're exempt from the noise regulations and pay way less tax, too. The neighbors are raising hell for me to get rid of the bees or else.

And since I'm not there all the time, I can't watch the property all the time, and cameras are difficult, as we don't have internet out there, except for maybe Starlink, which I'm unwilling to pay for. The other property of my neighbor is not as nice as ours, and they're in the bottom of the valley as we're on the south slope and have way more sun in the winter. Therefore, the neighbors change a lot. The last two neighbors each stayed for only two or three years. We've owned this place for the last 100 years, and the bees have always been there. O.P., I think you're in the clear. You've got permits and everything. And to be honest, I suspect she doesn't really have a bee allergy. My guess is she just doesn't want to get stung, and she's claiming that to guilt trip you into getting rid of the bees. So I'm giving you zero out of five buttholes. Am I the butthole for making a mom pick up her daughter in the middle of the night

from my kids sleepover? This weekend, I had a small birthday sleepover for my eight-year-old daughter and a couple of her friends. The night started completely normal. The girls had snacks, watched movies and went to bed around 10.30. But around 1.30 a.m., one of them came into my room, crying and woke me up. Single mom here, so there was no man in the room. Don't worry. She said she was scared and wanted her mom. While I was trying to calm her down, she told me this was her first time sleeping somewhere new, which was unbeknownst to me and caught me off guard. I did my best to try to comfort her. I sat with her and got her a drink, but she kept crying and getting more worked up, repeating that she wanted to go home. I gave it some time, but it wasn't getting any better.

So at that point, I felt like it wouldn't be right to force her to stay somewhere where she was clearly not happy. I called her mom and asked if she could come pick her up right then and there. Her mom came, but she seemed annoyed. The next morning, she texted me saying she wished I'd just waited it out until the morning, because now her daughter is embarrassed and might not want to try sleepovers again. Where I'm frustrated is that I feel like I've was put in a bad position and destined to fail from the start no matter what. I wasn't made aware that this was her first sleepover, and I don't think it's fair to use someone else's house, especially during their child's birthday party as the guinea pig without giving a heads up. I'm not mad at the

girl at all. I felt really bad for her, but I also don't think it was my job to handle that level of distress all night. But I'm wondering if I should have just stayed up with her for a bit longer to see if she would go back to sleep and try to push through until morning, as the mom said. Actually, O.P., I think the opposite is true. If I found out as a parent that my eight-year-old child was off at another person's house and was begging to come home, please, weeping, crying, please, I want to go home. And the parent wouldn't give me a phone call, at least to talk to the kid, at minimum, I'd be super pissed off. So as one parent to another O.P., I think you handled this pretty much as well as you could have possibly expected to under the situation, zero out of five

buttholes. Am I the butthole for telling my daughter-in-law and son that if they plan to do the whole stay-at-home parent thing, then they can start paying us rent? So we let our son and his wife live in one of our properties rent-free. They're only responsible for gas and electric. We cover everything else, including maintenance and repairs. They recently announced that they're having a child and were extremely excited and happy for them. The issue is they told us they wish to have his wife stay at home with the child, which makes no sense because she makes more than my son. So if they want one of them to stay home, it makes more sense for my son to do it, though I would still be against it because either way, they cannot afford to have only one person work. The only reason, in theory, that it would work

is because they don't have the major living expense of rent to worry about. My son and daughter-in-law are acting like I'm ruining their time as parents. They feel that I'm holding them to an unreasonable standard. I told them that the reason we've let them live rent-free was because we wanted to give them an opportunity to max out their 401k and save for a house. It was done to give them a leg up. It was never meant to be a forever thing. Right now, my son and his wife are threatening to cut

us off and force us to go through eviction to remove them. More or less, they're telling us we have to suck it up or they'll cut our grandchild out of our lives. My wife was on board, but doesn't want to be cut off from our grandchild. So she wants us to continue the current agreement, but I don't. They have no right to leverage visitation. I understand my wife's stance, but I think that what my son and daughter-in-law are doing is 100% manipulative and wrong. First of all, I can say that using a baby as a bargaining chip is super gross. They should want the kids' grandparents to be in the baby's life because it helps to enrich, you know, the overall experience of growing up. But instead, they just want to be lazy and cruise control on O.P.'s money. O.P., I'm on your side. I'm giving you zero out of five buttholes,

but to be honest, I feel like you're put in a no-win situation here. Either you enable their laziness probably forever if you give in, or you risk losing those relationships. So I'm honestly not sure what the right situation is, but for what is worth, I'm on your side here. I will say, though, in their defense, it is not your position to tell them which parent should stay home. That's totally their decision, their prerogative, they're right. The only proper say that you have in this OP is if they get to stay in your apartment rent-free. That was our slash am I the butthole. And if you like this content, be sure to follow my podcast because I put out new Reddit podcast episodes every single day.