Don’t You Care About Our Babies? Husband Goes Extreme to Stop Pregnant Wife from Working

Another husband gets slammed by Redditors!

But, really, you can also understand this man’s concern that prompted him to resort to extreme measures. His wife’s doctor has already warned her to slow down because her work was already affecting her pregnancy. But she wouldn’t take the advice seriously.

Want to judge for yourself? Here is this husband’s post on Reddit’s popular r/AmItheA–hole forum under the handle u/SeaMethod9837: “I (35) have been married to my wife Jen (30) for three years, and before that we dated for six years… she is also 32 weeks (eight months) pregnant with twins. She’s my best friend, and I absolutely adore her, with one minor flaw – she is a huge workaholic/perfectionist. While we both have very well-paying jobs, Jen’s job is way more stressful and time-demanding. Even though she is brilliant and amazing at what she does, she often works around the clock (on average, 60-hour weeks) at home and in office.”

According to OP, his wife’s attitude toward work was not a problem before. However, a couple of weeks ago, his wife’s doctor warned her that she had to take a leave from work early. She has started experiencing some health issues due to stress, but the babies were fine so far.

Nonetheless, OP’s wife continued working from home 6-8 hours every day. At first, it was still fine with OP since he knew she had a couple of cases to finish. But he soon observed that his wife could not control being a workaholic and she would often forget to eat and even fall asleep at her desk.

OP continued his post with these recent details: “So yesterday, when I got home, I realized that she had done the same thing again. I woke her up and told her she needed to rest in bed. She insisted she was fine and said there was an emergency with a client of hers and she just needed to finalize some things for a coworker. I asked her just to take a break first and take a nap/eat, but she said that she would once she was done and that it wouldn’t take her more than an hour. I told her fine, but no longer than an hour, even though I was pretty annoyed.”

Two hours passed, and his wife was still working very hard. OP finally got frustrated, and he unplugged the Wi-Fi and hid the cable. His only intention was to stop her from working on her laptop since it was apparent that there was no stopping her from what she was doing.

Soon, his wife realized what he had done, and she yelled at him, calling OP an AH. She also accused him of treating her like a child and said that he was being controlling, condescending, and borderline abusive.

This was OP’s response: “I told her that she is being stupid and just let the coworker who asked for her help handle it. I said that she was free to use the mobile hotspot on her phone or figure out the router herself, but otherwise, I would plug it back in when I woke up (which I did). She was so mad that she slept in the guest room, and when I went to apologize the next morning for calling her stupid (not for cutting the internet), she said that she couldn’t even look at me. She hasn’t said another word to me yet.”

As a result, OP now wonders if he had been a bit extreme even though he did it only out of concern for his wife’s and their babies’ health. From his point of view, his wife was overdoing her job when someone else was responsible for meeting the deadlines.

And so, was he being a jerk?

A lot of Redditors called him an AH. They think he was being controlling and that he had no right to interfere with his wife’s work, although she has been skipping meals and sleep. They reasoned that OP’s wife knew her body better than he, and it was she who could best decide when her overworking was harming their babies — and this in spite of the fact that an expert, her own doctor, had already warned this woman about the detrimental effects of stress.

But there were also those commenters whose judgment was Everyone Sucks Here (ESH). OP was terribly wrong for unplugging the Wi-Fi, which just caused further stress on his wife. On the other hand, his wife was also irresponsible for skipping meals and depriving herself and her unborn babies of adequate sleep.

OP accepted the YTA judgment on him, and he did make up with his wife. They apologized to each other and discussed his wife’s need to really put a balance between work and her personal life, especially since their twins were to be born in a month’s time.

Apparently, many of those in the AITA community need to know that undernutrition among pregnant women can be fatal. In 2020, more than a quarter of a million women died during and following pregnancy and childbirth according to the World Health Organization — meaning almost every 2 minutes, maternal death occurred. And what makes it difficult for health experts to accept is that most causes of these maternal deaths could have been preventable.

Now, regarding sleep, researchers at the Harvard Medical School found out that people who sleep less than 5 hours per night were twice as likely to develop dementia.

Further, the National Institutes of Health warned that sleep disruption has short- and long-term consequences. When it comes to short-term effects, these are “increased stress responsivity; somatic problems; reduced quality of life (QoL); emotional distress; mood disorders and other mental health problems; cognition, memory, and performance deficits; and behavior problems in otherwise healthy individuals.”

As for long-term consequences, they include “hypertension, dyslipidemia, CVD, weight-related issues, metabolic syndrome, and T2DM. Evidence suggests that sleep disruption may increase the risk of certain cancers and death. Sleep disruption may also worsen the symptoms of some gastrointestinal disorders.”

It’s not a joke, especially for pregnant women whose lack of care can directly affect the well-being of their babies. It’s easy to say for a woman that she knows her body more and can make all the right decisions concerning her health. But the fact is all adults make mistakes, and it’s often too late when we admit our carelessness.

These are some of the commenters who judged ESH with more wisdom:

From Njdevils11: “Cutting the wifi was a form of protest, not some long-term strategy, and I think people do not understand that. He pulled the wifi to force her to consider her unhealthy addiction to work. Did that stress her more? Yeah, probably, but I can understand why OP might think ONE SINGLE NIGHT of reduced internet capacity might be worth the stress. Seriously, she worked for 8 hours, didn’t eat, fell asleep in the middle of her work, and OP is the a-hole because he didn’t want her working into the night against the doctor’s recommendations? IDK, I guess maybe I’m cool with ESH, but only because OP was an a-hole with a purpose for his family. His wife was an a-hole for…work. I’d take OP’s side on this one.”

From Glittering-Score-258: “I came to say ESH too. But I don’t really blame OP for being somewhat controlling regarding the health of his babies and his wife. Someone else commented that OP is not her parent, but he IS those babies’ parent.”

From moonrockdrip5: “I’m glad somebody here is being reasonable. It probably isn’t the first time he’s asked her to consider her health with work. It seemed more like a last-ditch effort on his part for her to see what this was doing to her. Was it a bit extreme? Maybe, but it probably wasn’t his first time trying to get through to her. To get to the point of being so stressed at work that a doctor recommends you go on leave early should also tell people how extreme this is. I’m not saying his wife doesn’t have her own autonomy to make decisions; sometimes, we need a little help to see how our actions may be negatively affecting us. Again, I’m not saying this was the best way to get this message across; I’m just guessing that OP didn’t know how to get this message to her without her knowing. So, yes, ESH, but it doesn’t seem to be malicious or ‘borderline abusive’ to me. A shitty way of showing real concern for your wife’s health.”