AITAH for lying to my mother-in-law about our baby name.
I love my mother-in-law but she cannot keep a secret to save her life. The best example I can give is all the relatives that congratulated her youngest son, my brother-in-law on his new baby at his wedding. They hadn't told anyone besides her and his fiancee's mom. But it was only people from my husband's side of the family with the information.
I didn't want a gender reveal party or anything like that so we didn't have one. And we have everything we need for our baby. My husband and I had picked out two names for our baby. One for each possibility. My mother-in-law would not stop pestering me about the name. I finally made her promise not to tell and not to tell anyone the gender. I told her our baby name would be Chrysta Maxine. Named after the fairy from Ferngully.
After our son was born we had our baby shower do everyone could meet him his name is Maximus James, named for my husbands favorite movie and his grandfather. His grandfather was Maximus. We had a lot of female style gifts and even some monogrammed with Max or other equivalent things. S lot of people were confused.
My mother-in-law said I made her look stupid to family and friends. I asked how since she had promised us she wouldn't tell anyone. I followed up asking why people thought they knew our baby's name and gender. I asked her if she had told anyone. She admitted she might have told s few people but she had sworn them to secrecy. I said that any embarrassment she felt was her own fault.
She took that as an attack on her character.
Long story short she is upset that I made her look stupid and that people wasted their money because I lied to her. My entire side is that I didn't want to tell her and that if she hadn't lied to me no one but her and I would ever have known.
AITAH?
Posted Jan 8, 2026, 11:53 PM UTC