Mother’s Reaction to Father-in-Law Unknowingly Consuming Her Breast Milk Divides Internet
Refrigerated baby bottles.
Is it wrong to not warn an in-law before they start consuming breast milk from a cereal bowl?
The question is currently dividing the internet, with some siding with the mother and others criticizing her for staying quiet.
As the mom in question explained earlier this week on Reddit, she adds breast milk to her 15-month-old son’s cereal bowl because he’s still breastfeeding. She did this on one recent morning while her husband’s parents were visiting and, after leaving her toddler and father-in-law together while she went into another room, she came back to find her father-in-law finishing the cereal her son hadn’t finished.
“I laughed a little but went along with my morning,” the mother wrote.
She was later questioned about the milk, which her father-in-law said “tasted weird,” and she revealed where it came from.
“I swear he looked like he was going to keel over and vomit,” she wrote. “He was angry and asked why I'd watch him drink it and not tell him.” Her mother-in-law agreed that there should have been a heads-up, she added.
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The Reddit user relented, writing she “should have” told her father-in-law when she spotted him eating the cereal, but, “I thought he saw me tip it from the bottle.”
She then invited the internet to weigh in.
Several Reddit users thought she was in the wrong.
"You didn't have any obligation to warn him in advance or anything, but when you saw him eating it, you should have said something immediately,” one user wrote.
“You had to guess that this was something he'd want to know,” said another. “I'm not buying your ‘thought he saw’ me excuse.”
Another user agreed, writing that she "should have told him once you saw him eating it and subsequently laughing at him over this.”
Others were fully on her side.
“Nah, maybe FIL [father-in-law] should stop eating other people’s food without asking,” one comment said. “Serves him right.”
Another user said it was “wild” that her father-in-law “took a baby's cereal and started eating it.”
“Honestly who walks around someone’s house just finishing other people’s meals,” one person wondered. “Like it’s a freaking baby, get your own cereal.”
Still, others were divided even in their own responses.
“You should have told him immediately when you saw him eating your sons meal that he had breastmilk in the cereal,” one user wrote. “But also, what full grown adult just helps them to any and all food they just see laying around, especially a baby’s??”
In response to that opinion, another user wrote that they were “surprised” the father-in-law “cared about the other bodily fluids” given that he was “eating baby drool.”
So, tell us, what would you do?
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