Teen Mom Hides Her Pregnancy from Her Parents. Then They Meet Her Newborn at Christmas Dinner

An 18-year-old new mother says a Christmas dinner with extended family quickly became uncomfortable when her parents—who she’s been largely estranged from—found out she had recently given birth.

In a Reddit post, the woman said she has long had a strained relationship with her parents, claiming they favored her older brother, now 28, throughout her childhood. By age 6, she wrote, she was being sent between her parents’ home and her paternal grandparents’ house, before moving in with her grandparents full time at age 10.

“Even though my grandparents were retired already, they tried their best to give me a nice childhood, even if my parents didn’t want to give me one,” she wrote. She added that she last spoke to her parents more than a year ago, around the 2024 holiday season.

She said she learned she was pregnant in late March. Acknowledging that she is young, she explained that she loves her daughter deeply and chose to share the news only with people close to her and her boyfriend. Her baby girl was born on Dec. 2.

Tensions rose during a Christmas dinner at her grandparents’ home, where extended relatives—including her parents and brother—were invited.

“I could tell they was shocked to see me holding a baby, let alone MY baby, but didn’t say anything at first, until the actual dinner started, when one of my aunts asked me how Baby was doing,” she wrote.

As she talked about her daughter becoming more alert and starting to coo, she said her mother interrupted to ask why she had kept the baby “a secret” from them.

“Not a secret, just didn’t tell you,” she recalled replying.

According to the post, that response triggered an argument. She said her mother accused her of “taking away their chance to be grandparents” and called her selfish for not sharing the pregnancy. Her father, she wrote, agreed—saying it was rude and embarrassing to learn about the baby in front of other relatives.

“I told them straight up that I didn’t feel comfortable sharing something that big with people who barely talk to me and, I just wanted to be left alone and have a peaceful pregnancy,” she wrote.

The conversation left the table “super awkward,” she admitted. While she said she didn’t regret prioritizing her peace or her daughter, she later heard that some relatives felt she could have handled the moment differently.

“My grandparents and my boyfriend are trying to reassure me that I didn’t have to tell them anything,” she wrote, adding that she’s now questioning herself and asked other Reddit users whether she was in the wrong.

In the comments, many users backed her decision.

“You are the mother, you choose whether you tell or not. BTW, wish you luck for motherhood!” one person wrote.

“Motherhood ain’t a group project. She doesn’t owe updates to ppl who treated her like an afterthought 👏” another added.

A third commenter wrote, “They can’t be grandparents, they would have to have been parents first.”