Topics: Parenting, Reddit, Life, Health, Mental Health
A woman has faced a backlash online after asking if she should request a gift be returned.
Under some circumstances it would be fine to request a gift back. You might have fallen out with someone, the present may have been an heirloom item or you might simply have realised that there was something wrong with the gift.
These would all be valid reasons, and it just goes to show, context is everything.
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However, this Redditor did not impress other users of the subreddit 'Would I be the a**hole?' with her particular dilemma.
She and her husband had attended the baby shower of a friend, and had taken along a gift from the expectant parents' list.
Tragically, some time after the shower, the friend in question lost the baby. Not only that, but in such a way as to make it unlikely and potentially dangerous for her to carry any future child to term.
The Redditor said that she had been left in a pickle as she and her husband had spent £320 / $400 on the gift, and felt that it would now be a waste for the gift to just 'sit in a box in her attic'. She asked if there was any way that they could request that their grieving friend return the gift.
She wrote: "It's been a few months since her loss and my husband is now unsure of how to navigate the gift. It's not something she can use for her older kid. Asking her to return the gift seems cruel, like adding a chore onto her grief, and it's probably past the return window anyway.
"I'm also not sure if she's going to keep trying to have more kids (very risky for the baby and herself) and it seems incredibly insensitive to ask, plus she may not have decided yet. Asking her to pay us back for it also seems very cruel.
"My husband and I are also decently high earners but $400 is still a lot of money. It's one thing if she's able to get a few years of use out of the item, that's money well spent. But if it's going to sit in a box in her attic for years....that's where we are getting stuck."
Needless to say, Redditors were not impressed by her query, and responded unequivocally that yes, she would absolutely be in the wrong for making such a request from a grieving friend.
One responded: "I was expecting something like 'we loaned her an heirloom bassinet, you can see 17 generations of teeth marks from my ancestors on the spindles. I'm unexpectedly pregnant myself, WIBTAH if we interrupt her mourning to ask the bassinet be returned'. This is just 'my husband spent $400 on a woman I don't know well and don't really like, can I squeeze blood out of that stone.'"
Another wrote: "I don’t know how you can hear someone had a miscarriage and potentially can no longer have children and then worry about how to get your gift back."
A third replied: "Have you ever had a miscarriage? Have any of your close friends had one and discussed their feelings with you? I'm confused about how you can think this would be an option."
Fortunately, the poster took the responses on board. She posted an update after reading the replies, saying: "I appreciate the feedback I've gotten. We will not be asking about the gift. We don't want to make her feel worse than she already is."
That's probably for the best.
