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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/aita71 on 2023-07-30 20:50:25.

Throwaway account for privacy. I had to repost, because my first post was stopped. Made a few edits.

I (71 female) have a son (39 male ) whose wife (36 female) gave birth to their fourth child nine months ago. All of her births have taken a long time, and she has been induced the last two times, including this one.

My husband (72 male) and I were babysitting the three older kids (5 male, 4 female and 2 female). She was induced at eight in the morning, and by one in the afternoon, there was not much progress, if any at all. Since the kids are a handfull, I told my son he needed to come home to help for a few hours, since it looked like it would take a really long time.

Since they live half an hour away from the hospital, he could go back if anything happened, so it is not like he wouldn’t be present when the child was born, which I ofcourse understand is a big moment for him and his wife.

My son took great offense to my request and told me to suck it up, bribe the kids with treats or whatever worked for us, and that there was no way he would leave his wife’s side, unless there was an emergency with one of the kids, like they were admitted to the hospital or something.

I told him that the kids were their responsibility, and that they couldn’t expect us to babysit around the clock if this took days. He told me we should not have said yes to babysit at all if we wouldn’t stick it out, since one never knows how long a birth will take, but that he would get someone to come and then he hung up. Three hours later someone showed up and we went home.

We offered to babysit for a few hours the next day, but our offer was declined, because the people who came to relieve us, stayed until the baby was born and my son came home.

After this they have not asked us to babysit once and has hired a sitter instead, which we feel is a waste of money, since we are available for free. We get to see the grandkids if we visit them, but they very seldom visit us, compared to before.

I tried talking to both my son and DIL, but they said they felt we didn’t respect them at all since we wouldn’t “even let her give birth in peace”. My husband and I agree that they are overreacting, since she did not, in fact, give birth until seven the next morning, 23 hours after being induced, and our son could very easily have helped us with the kids for a few hours.

So AITA like my son says I am, for helping us with the kids, even if his wife was being induced, but had little to no progress?