My Husband Named Our Baby While I Was Being Sewn Up After My Emergency C-Section. And That’s Not the Worst Part.

Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.

Dear Care and Feeding, 

A few months ago, I needed to have an emergency C-section a month before my due date. Thankfully I came through it safely, and have a wonderful little son. There is just one problem. When my husband “Wade” and I were in the process of choosing a name, Wade really liked a particular one, but I told him it was out of the question because it was the same name of the boy who bullied me relentlessly from elementary through middle school (let’s call him “Benny”). Wade said he understood, we chose another name we both liked together, and I didn’t think of it again. But then my husband did something while I was being closed up in surgery that still has me feeling hurt and betrayed.

When the nurse brought the baby into my hospital room, she said, “here’s ‘Benny.” I thought I was hearing things. I asked her to repeat herself. The name she gave was the one I thought I heard: the name of my childhood bully, Benny. I turned to my smiling husband and demanded to know what was going on. He told me that he had named our baby while I was still in surgery. I felt as if the floor had dropped out from beneath me and asked the nurse to take the baby out of the room.

Once they were gone, I told Wade either the name would be changed or I was going to divorce him. He tried to cajole me into leaving the name as it was, but backed down when I threatened to call my sister’s husband—who is a family law attorney—then and there to put the divorce in motion.

We changed the name to the one we had agreed upon and returned home. Wade has apologized, although I suspect he’s holding some resentment.  I have tried to move on from this, but the sense of how he violated my trust still stings and I am considering getting a divorce anyway.  Are my feelings justified, or am I being vindictive?

—Betrayed New Mom

Dear Betrayed New Mom,

Your feelings are one hundred percent justified. Your husband’s actions here show both disrespect for your opinion, and cowardice on his part. The idea that he would resent you is laughable. If anyone should be resentful (no one should, it’s not constructive) it’s you. He literally waited until you were incapacitated and then broke an agreement. And the cajoling! Who starts cajoling someone who has just had major surgery?!

There’s a good reason that people try to make some of these decisions before having kids. Hashing out big decisions right after having a baby when you are both pumped full of endorphins and one of you is (potentially) on a lot of meds is a bad idea. This should be a moment for meeting the beautiful new person you brought into the world, not an argument between caregivers.

It would be best for your relationship to somehow give your husband the benefit of the doubt, but I just can’t see a way to do that here. He really screwed up. If the two of you want to keep your marriage intact, he is going to need to figure out how to respect you and to understand what a cowardly act this was. I have to assume that “Benny” holds some kind of meaning and importance to him. If he couldn’t talk to you about that before the fact, it might be difficult for him to talk to you about this at all. Don’t “move on” from this if it’s still bothering you. Tell him you’re struggling with it. Consider doing a round of therapy. Ideally he will learn how to talk to you about something when he disagrees instead of waiting for you to be laid out and sneakily doing whatever he wants.

Dear Care and Feeding, 

Growing up, my family was part of a large group of families that often met up for cookouts, kid sleepovers, beach trips, camping and holidays. Most of the parents had highly technical jobs with the government (military, foreign policy, trade, etc) and had multiple degrees. These get-togethers were full of shared parenting, and conversations that involved asking questions, and learning. I feel fortunate to have such an extended “chosen family.” Mostly, the families leaned left and my siblings and I are all non-affiliated, but definitely trend liberal.

Contrast this with my wife’s family, who seem to mostly view anyone not in their church or family as an outsider and not to be trusted. While some have always been staunchly Republican, their vehement rightward turn has become more pronounced in the past 8 years (my wife excepted). My issue is not so much with their politics, but with the lies they constantly repeat and how every conversation quickly turns into an excuse to repeat some inane non-truth. In the past, I’d try to point them to facts in a non-political way. Now I mostly just roll my eyes and keep quiet, although occasionally I can’t help myself.

We all have so much to celebrate health-wise and wealth-wise, and the kids—mine, and my nieces and nephews—are all fantastic. But conversations among the adults are one bland statement (usually fact-free) after another, and a lot of dunking on Democrats. With holidays coming up, how can I steer these conversations to be more positive? I should note that my wife is generally fine with me ditching these events, but I feel rude avoiding them.

—Bored and annoyed

Dear Bored and Annoyed,

While you may have grown up with an interesting and engaging chosen family, it sounds like your wife’s family just isn’t going to provide the same kind of get-togethers for you. That’s OK. You don’t have to engage with the adults if it’s going to make you bored and frustrated. Go hang out with the nieces and nephews to give them a positive role model. Or ditch the events entirely—it really seems like that would be fine.

Consider how your presence is affecting your wife’s family conversations. Family gatherings aren’t necessarily the place to change hearts and minds and I’m sure they find it annoying when someone comes in trying to trot out facts that refute their regurgitations of misinformation. Don’t (visibly) roll your eyes at them, and definitely don’t jump in to lecture them. Don’t let their unhappiness spread to you.

If you do go to these events and hang out with the adults, talk about something positive in your life or their life. Bring up sports or hobbies or cars. Ask them questions. If they start going on about how awful their lives are because of the various bogeymen that NewsMax and OANN have manifested in their minds, smile and steer the conversation toward their upcoming vacation, or how their kids are doing. People generally love talking about themselves.

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Dear Care and Feeding, 

What can I do when older kids with social media meet my 4-year-old out in public, and start photographing her and posting her image on social media? My kid is into the offer of being photographed, sitting on older girls laps, being complimented by them etc. I know it’s innocent on these individual children’s end but I don’t know who they’re connected to on the internet.

I only post my kid online in a controlled way. And I don’t let school use her photo outside of our class without my express consent. What can I say to these strangers?

—No Photos Please

Dear No Photos,

You need to tell these older kids exactly what you’d tell an adult stranger that was posting pictures of your kid on social media: stop. Tell them it’s not ok to post photos of anyone, no matter how old, without consent. It’s a teachable moment for them. No one under 13 should even have an account on social media that is not managed by a parent, so they need to be able to handle an adult conversation if they’re going to be posting.

If they seem inclined to listen, perhaps they can learn from you that every photo they post is more fodder for the AI beast that will grow fat and consume and process without mercy until every bit of personal data has been sluiced through an enterprise-level machine learning algorithm. Tell them that facial recognition will eventually make it into the databases of supermarkets that will raise the prices of groceries when they reach for them. Go full boogey-man! Tell them their DMs will be automatically attached to their college applications. (They won’t, but…they could be.)

If being a crusader against societal collapse due to artificial intelligence isn’t your thing, just politely extract your child from the situation explaining that her photo does not belong on the internet. You also need to get in there before they take the photo. Asking them to delete it is going to be much more difficult than asking them not to take it in the first place. If your daughter is the one pushing them to take the photos, you can tell your daughter that you are her personal photographer and offer to do it yourself. Pretty horrifying world we’ve created, huh?

—Greg