A woman has spoken of her upset that her own family wanted her to keep her baby a secret from the world.
The woman posted on Reddit that when she first became pregnant she decided not to tell her family until they were born.
The 21-year-old conceived when she was 19 and moved to the US from Canada with her now husband as he had better work opportunities.
Although it took her mum a couple of weeks to be ok with having a grandson, initially telling her daughter to “give him up” she went to visit eventually and dropped a bombshell on her daughter.
The Redditor goes on to explain that her mum told her to ditch her son and move back home – and that she was too ashamed to tell their extended family of the news because it would destroy their reputation.
She said: “I didn’t let them know until after my son was born, my mom said some really nasty things like “leave him with the father and come back for a few years and take him back after” and “give him up”.
“It hurt me a lot as I was a new mother and just needed her support, they then proceeded to tell me that we haven’t told any extended family about my son.
“They told me that they are too ashamed to tell anyone, that it would ruin our family image/reputation if we did.
“It was easy for my parents to tell people lies about my life because I live in the US and all my family are in Canada.
The young mother is planning on visiting her family in the coming months, and has been told to attend any events alone while her parents look after the baby – to keep the secret intact.
She said: “My parents until this day are pretty adamant on keeping my son a secret. They tell me to wait till I’m older and we can let people know.
“Unfortunately my husband thinks this is a toxic thing to do and I should just tell my extended family myself.
“I don’t want to repeat this toxic cycle for my son, but I’m afraid my parents will disown me if I go ahead and tell my relatives about my son.
“My mom tells me when I come to visit that I have to attend all family events myself and that she will take care of my son.
“When she visited me in the states she always went to another room in my house to answer the phone so they wouldn’t hear my son in the background.”
Despite the separation between her family she continues by saying that she has a happy life, her marriage is good, they do well for themselves and with her son.
Further on she updates the thread with the news that she decided to tell her cousins and they were on their side about the disagreement.
She said: “I told some of my cousins yesterday about my son and they were on my side.”
But her siblings felt very differently about the news.
She said: “My siblings went pretty ballistic on me, telling me things like ‘now mom has to deal with it while you’re in California’, ‘you ruined our happiness’ and ‘you don’t get to deal with anything because you live in California’, ‘we don’t know what to say to people’, ‘you’re so stupid for telling them’, ‘you’re only thinking about yourself’.
Despite the hardship her family is facing, she finishes by saying she’s happy she decided to let the secret out.
She said: “I haven’t heard from my mom yet but I will soon, I don’t even care. I’m just happy I did this for my son and I.”
