Having a baby is a very exciting thing, and when a woman is happily pregnant, she may welcome words of congratulations from family and friends; however, it’s best to never ever assume someone is pregnant. It doesn’t matter if you think she is about to pop, don’t say it. Don’t ask when the baby is due. Don’t touch her belly. She may not be pregnant.

Can you imagine how it would make someone feel to have someone assume that she is pregnant when she’s not? Can you imagine how much worse it would make that someone feel if she happened to be a teenager?

One dad experienced first hand how a teenager who is not pregnant reacts to being called pregnant, but this story is deeper than an issue of looking pregnant.

This dad’s adopted daughter, Sarah, has PCOS, a medical condition he had never heard of until she was diagnosed. She has a large ovarian cyst that is going to be removed, but in the meantime, she looks pregnant.

It must be terribly hard for a teenager to feel self-confident knowing that she looks pregnant due to a medical condition. What makes it even worse is that because she has PCOS, she will most likely face infertility. A comment about being pregnant hurts on multiple levels. 

This dad was at church with his wife and their daughter when a woman came up to them. The woman assumed that Sarah was pregnant and basically asked the girl for her baby. This churchgoer is infertile and thought she saw the opportunity to possibly have a child of her own.

These comments must have been painful for the teen, and she did not react well. She blew up at the woman calling her a “baren bitch.” At church. Yes. Really. The infertile churchgoer ended up crying.

Here’s where the question comes in. The girl’s mother and father can’t agree on how they should respond to their daughter’s outburst. The mother thinks she should be punished because her behavior was inappropriate. The father understands why she reacted the way she did and thinks the woman at church basically deserved it, but now he’s second guessing himself.

In a subreddit Am I The *sshole, the dad explained the situation and said, “My wife thinks that Sarah has anger issues, and that we should punish her for not being sensitive. I don’t agree.”

The comments seem to side with the dad saying things like “Was she angry? Maybe. But to have weird strange adults putting dibs on your baby in a public place when you’re enduring a health condition like that…most women here would want to say ‘barren bitch.’”

Yet, the dad doesn’t completely win the argument. Many people think that Sarah would benefit from therapy so she can learn more appropriate ways to react.

“However, your wife is right that Sarah would benefit from counseling…just not for the reason she thinks.”

“I’ve been a counselor working with several children who had been adopted, and one thing that may have set Sarah off here (beyond the many, valid reasons mentioned by others) is that she might have some very deep, complex feelings about having been given up for adoption (assuming her bio-parents weren’t deceased). Having someone ask her to give up a (non-existent) baby probably stirred up those feelings. Add to that the pain of her condition, fear of the surgery and normal teen stress. That would be a lot for anyone to handle! Therapy could give her some great tools and a safe sounding board for venting.”

What do you think? Did Sarah react appropriately? Should she get counseling?