A father has been accused of setting his children up for years of confusion and bullying after he revealed the name of his new baby daughter.
The mother of his first child explained what had happened in a lengthy Reddit post, branding his behaviour “f**king weird” and “spineless”.
The Redditor began by offering some context, explaining: “I ended up falling pregnant with my 10-year-old daughter during a drunken hook-up with a friend in my mid 20s.”
She added: “When we found out we decided to keep the child and co-parent while remaining friends. We were never a couple and we didn't want to be one either.”
She then said that the dad and his partner of four years fell pregnant last year, and that she wanted her daughter and the new baby “to have a close relationship despite having different mothers”.
“All in all, I thought everything was great and I was excited for my daughter to have a sibling as she's always wanted one but I had no interest in having another child,” she continued.
Then, three days before her Reddit post, the woman said the dad’s girlfriend gave birth to a baby girl and they asked her to bring her daughter to the hospital to meet her new sister.
“I did exactly that but when they introduced us to the baby I was shocked,” she wrote.
This was because they’d given their little girl the exact same name as the first daughter.
“[The girlfriend] didn't seem to have any issue with this when she introduced the baby bold as brass,” the Redditor recounted.
However, she acknowledged: “My friend seemed uncomfortable and wouldn't look at me directly.”
“I asked them what they were playing at, at which point my friend’s father said he'd take my daughter down to the cafeteria to get something to eat and left with her,” she went on.
“My friend told me to calm down and not overreact while his girlfriend told me she didn't see the issue and it was a pretty name.”
She then asked them whether they named the baby in honour of the older daughter – in an attempt to “understand the logic here” – but the girlfriend simply replied that “no, it was just a pretty name she liked”.
“I then asked if they planned to use a nickname or a middle name when addressing to her on a daily basis and her response was that she didn't see a need for that,” the outraged mum continued.
“I told them they were being ridiculous and that they couldn't do this, I then told his girlfriend that I found this frankly creepy and told my friend he was being spineless if he was happy to go along with this.
“He tried to claim our daughter could use a nickname or something but I shut that down immediately, asking why it was more reasonable for a girl who has used that name for a decade to [change] her name compared to a baby who had no concept of what a name was yet.”
Wrapping up her post, the Redditor went on: “His girlfriend told me I was being a b***h talking to her like that after she just gave birth and asked the nurses to remove me saying I was being disruptive.”
She concluded by stressing: “I know that what they want to name their child is their choice [...] but this is one name that should be off limits or adjusted, they even have the same surname as they have the same father.
“Something about it just felt malicious and deliberate as if [the girlfriend] is trying to replace my daughter.’
Her post on the AITA forum racked up more than 23,000 upvotes and 4,100 comments in just two days as readers voiced their horror at the father and girlfriend’s behaviour.
“The same FIRST and LAST name is going to cause both those girls a life time of issues, especially with the same father,” one wrote.
“ I usually would have a bit more sympathy for a woman who just gave birth but she seemed deliberately cold and cruel towards your daughter (her step daughter) to have done this.”
Another suggested the mum should take legal action, saying: “I would tell your daughter's father that you will be going for full custody of your daughter and taking him for child support because you can no longer trust him to do the right thing by your daughter.
“How can you trust that he wouldn't allow his [girlfriend] to treat your daughter poorly based on this behaviour?” they asked, adding: “I'm sorry but your daughter is never going to get treated right by her father's gf, she is already trying to replace your daughter by giving her daughter the same name.”
A third agreed, accusing the dad of “thinking his partner is more important than his daughter”, and asking: “If this is how he's going to be now, how is he going to be when she's treating [the first] daughter like s**t?”
And a fourth advised the mother to change her daughter’s surname to her own, writing: “I suggest you look into changing your daughter's surname to your own surname (or at least suggest she can do it when she's old enough).
“At least they won't have the same full name, and she can get some distance from her creepy father.”
Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter
Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.
