She co-founded and runs a digital strategy companyfirst recipient of the social media Maggie Award for Media Excellence from Planned Parenthood of America.
She’s also dealt with depression for about 20 years.
For a long time, she was able to balance things through a routine that included meditation and yoga.
But then, two years ago, it stopped being enough.
She didn’t know what was going on. And when she tried new methods, like acupuncture and craniosacral therapy, and those still weren’t helping, she started to feel like a failure. That’s when she decided to go to a doctor.
Her doctor diagnosed her with major depression. And he prescribed Prozac to help treat it.
GIF from “Glee.”
This was not what Zandt wanted to hear. But even though she’d dealt with depression before — this time, it was different. And she needed help.
So she swallowed her pride … and her new medication.
Slowly, she started to feel better.
Zandt knows that there are many people like her who never thought they’d take antidepressants. Stigma against mental health medication made her hesitant to take it at first. That’s why she created a touching comic that takes us along her journey of coming to terms with it. She wants everyone to know that it’s perfectly OK.
Stigma against mental health — and taking medication for it — is widespread.
Studies consistently show that it’s one of the biggest barriers to getting help and staying on meds.
That’s why efforts like Deanna’s comic and the recent viral hashtag #MedicatedAndMighty are so important: they help break down barriers so that people feel freer to pursue the treatment they need to live healthier, happier lives.
Here’s to healthier humans living on this planet more willingly and joyfully!
A single door can open up a world of endless possibilities. For homeowners, the front door of their house is a gateway to financial stability, job security, and better health. Yet for many, that door remains closed. Due to the rising costs of housing, 1 in 3 people around the world wake up without the security of safe, affordable housing.
Since 1976, Habitat for Humanity has made it their mission to unlock and open the door to opportunity for families everywhere, and their efforts have paid off in a big way. Through their work over the past 50 years, more than 65 million people have gained access to new or improved housing, and the movement continues to gain momentum. Since 2011 alone, Habitat for Humanity has expanded access to affordable housing by a hundredfold.
A world where everyone has access to a decent home is becoming a reality, but there’s still much to do. As they celebrate 50 years of building, Habitat for Humanity is inviting people of all backgrounds and talents to be part of what comes next through Let’s Open the Door, a global campaign that builds on this momentum and encourages people everywhere to help expand access to safe, affordable housing for those who need it most. Here’s how the foundation to a better world starts with housing, and how everyone can pitch in to make it happen.
Volunteers raise a wall for the framework of a new home during the first day of building at Habitat for Humanity’s 2025 Carter Work Project.
Globally, almost 3 billion people, including 1 in 6 U.S. families, struggle with high costs and other challenges related to housing. A crisis in itself, this also creates larger problems that affect families and communities in unexpected ways. People who lack affordable, stable housing are also more likely to experience financial hardship in other areas of their lives, since a larger share of their income often goes toward rent, utilities, and frequent moves. They are also more likely to experience health problems due to chronic stress or environmental factors, such as mold. Housing insecurity also goes hand-in-hand with unstable employment, since people may need to move further from their jobs or switch jobs altogether to offset the cost of housing.
Affordable homeownership creates a stable foundation for families to thrive, reducing stress and increasing the likelihood for good health and stable employment. Habitat for Humanity builds and repairs homes with individual families, but it also strengthens entire communities as well. The MicroBuild® Initiative, for example, strengthens communities by increasing access to loans for low-income families seeking to build or repair their homes. Habitat ReStore locations provide affordable appliances and building materials to local communities, in addition to creating job and volunteer opportunities that support neighborhood growth.
Marsha and her son pose for a photo while building their future home with Southern Crescent Habitat for Humanity in Georgia.
Everyone can play a part in the fight for housing equity and the pursuit of a better world. Over the past 50 years, Habitat for Humanity has become a leader in global housing thanks to an engaged network of volunteers—but you don’t need to be skilled with a hammer to make a meaningful impact. Building an equitable future means calling on a wide range of people and talents.
Here’s how you can get involved in the global housing movement:
Speaking up on social media about the growing housing crisis
Volunteering on a Habitat for Humanity build in your local community
Travel and build with Habitat in the U.S. or in one of 60+ countries where we work around the globe
Join the Let’s Open the Door movement and, when you donate, you can create your own personalized door
Every action, big and small, drives a global movement toward a better future. A safe home unlocks opportunity for families and communities alike, but it’s volunteers and other supporters, working together with a shared vision, who can open the door for everyone.
Photo credit: The Ewing Family/Instagram – A family of four decided to get in an RV and leave their life behind. They park it at Disney World 300 days per year.
Ever been on vacation and wondered what would happen if you just…never left? Well, some people do just that. A growing number of people live full-time on cruises, at resorts, or in comfy RVs that allow them to explore the world as their leisure.
One such family recently joined the movement, and they picked a perfect, if a little peculiar, place to call their Home Base.
Family of four lives at Disney World year-round
In 2021 and 2022, the Ewing family suffered some devastating losses of people that were close to them.
Lauren Ewing tells Upworthy that the shockwave of those losses caused the family to really take stock of the way they were living. “That made us want to live and not just exist,” she says.
So, they decided to sell everything, including their home near Athens, Georgia and buy an RV. Adam Ewing, a real estate developer, could work remotely while Lauren was already well-practiced at homeschooling the kids thanks to COVID.
They began traveling and seeing the country and, more importantly, enjoying each other as much as possible. But they needed a home base. And for the Ewings, the choice was obvious.
“Disney has always been our ‘happy place,’” Lauren says. So even though they take the RV out exploring a few times a year, they always “have a desire to come back home.”
Some people live on cruise ships because the math works out and the all-inclusive lifestyle winds up being cheaper than a mortgage.
The Ewings don’t make any bones about it: Living in the Disney Bubble isn’t cheap, but for them, it’s well worth it.
The family parks their RV at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort RV Park. Lauren says it costs about $155-300 per night, depending on the time of year. That’s a hefty price tag before food and the costs of maintaining the RV. They also pony up for season passes to the parks so they can visit any time they want, and membership to the nearby Four Season Golf Club.
There is one catch with living at Disney World in an RV: You technically can’t live there all the time.
“We are able to stay 26 days and have to leave for 24 hours before we can come back. We go to a nearby campground for the night and come right back!” Lauren says. That means the Ewings, including other trips, end up parked at Disney over 200 days out of the year.
It speaks volumes that, despite the cost and their unlimited freedom, they choose to keep coming back to the same spot.
People ask the Ewings all the time: Why not stay somewhere nearby, but not technically on Disney property? It would be far cheaper.
But Lauren says the family adores being inside the “Disney bubble.”
The resort’s transportation makes it easy to get anywhere. The resort is sparklingly clean, the food is world-class, and best of all, people love to visit the Ewings. Who wouldn’t?
Still, the family has to live a somewhat normal life. The kids have school, and dad has his real estate business to run. They try to cook their own food whenever possible, exercise, have family time, explore hobbies. You know, regular everyday things. They don’t spend all day every day at the parks unless friends or family are visiting.
But the easy access allows them to make incredible magic memories. They’ll pop into Epcot and enjoy the fireworks over the lake, grab a funnel cake at Magic Kingdom, or do just a small handful of rides before the park closes.
Crucially, Lauren and Adam use the proximity they pay so much for to make sure they’re enjoying their kids’ youth as much as possible:
“It is really special to also just do a date with one of the kids. Come over for a ride or two, get a sweet treat, reconnect with some one on one time with them!” Lauren tells Upworthy.
The Ewings reject the idea of deferring joy, travel, and whimsy in their lives in favor of saving everything for retirement. They’re a young, happy, and healthy family right now, and they’re going to enjoy every second of it no matter the costs because there’s no guarantee what tomorrow might hold.
The Ewings aren’t alone. A growing number of people, especially younger generations, would rather spend their money on the here and now. The scale might be different from the Ewings’: It’s taking that vacation instead of saving the money. It’s going to your favorite restaurant instead of cooking at home. Or maybe it’s quitting your job to travel and figure out the rest later. Everyone’s version of living in the here and now is different, but it’s becoming an increasingly universal sentiment.
Almost anyone would love to experience what it’s like to live at their ‘happy place’ with the people they love the most. Lauren and Adam just so happen to have the means to make it a reality. The rough times in their recent lives convinced them without a doubt that it would be a choice they wouldn’t regret.
What is a grandparent’s role in taking care of their grandchildren? This is a question with a billion different answers, depending on who you ask, and one that can lead to a lot of conflict within a family.
Some grandparents want to take on an active role in their grandkid’s lives, which can lead to unsolicited visits and other forms of boundary crossing. Others feel that their child rearing days are over, and that they’ve earned the right to take on less responsibility, which can also lead to stress and hurt feelings.
A story that went viral on Reddit’s AITA forum further complicated this conundrum, since the woman at the center of the controversy was a stepparent.
The backstory behind the viral post
At the time of writing her post, the woman, 38, met her husband Sam, 47, ten years ago, when his daughter, Leah, 25, was 15 (Leah’s mom passed away when she was 10). The couple married five years ago after Leah had moved out to go to college.
When Leah became pregnant she wanted to keep the baby, but her boyfriend didn’t. After the disagreement, the boyfriend broke up with her. This forced Leah to move back home because she couldn’t afford to be a single parent and live alone on a teacher’s salary.
Leah’s story is familiar to many young mothers facing similar difficulties. The father isn’t involved in the baby’s life as a caretaker or financially. Sadly, according to the U.S. Census Bureau 40% of all children in the U.S. are born without their biological fathers living in the home.
The new mother is a teacher and can’t afford to live on her own with a child. According to a 2024 Redfin study, Portland, OR leads the nation with teachers able to afford 91.3% of apartments near their schools, followed closely by Pittsburgh at 83.9%. Still, nationally the average teacher can afford less than half of nearby rentals, and homeownership remains out of reach for most educators.
The situation gets complicated
The author of the Reddit post, now a new stepgrandmother, had reservations. She says, “I had concerns about how she was going to raise a child on a teacher’s salary by herself. I suggested getting him to pay child support. She did not want that. Sam thought I should stay out of it.”
Unfortunately, any trepidations she had were confirmed. She writes, “Once she had the baby around 4 months back, Leah seemed to realize having a baby is not the sunshine and rainbows she thought it was. She barely got any sleep during the last four months. All the while Sam was helping her with the baby while I did almost all chores myself.”
She continues to say, “Now her leave is ending. She did not want to leave the baby at daycare or with a nanny. Sam and I both work as well.”
A grandmother cares for her grandchild. Photo credit: Canva
Leah asked her stepmother if she would stay home with the baby. The stepmother said no because she never wanted to have a baby and she has a job. “I asked why Leah can’t stay home with the baby herself,” the woman wrote. “She said how she was young and had to build a career. I said many people take breaks to raise kids, and she broke down crying about how she was so tired all the time being a mom and needed something else in her life too.”
After the woman told her stepdaughter no, her husband pressured her to stay home with the baby. But she refused to give up her job to raise her stepdaughter’s child. “Leah said yesterday how she wished her mom was alive since she would have had her back. She said I didn’t love her, and my husband is also mad at me,” the woman wrote. The woman asked the Reddit community if she was in the wrong for “refusing to help my stepdaughter with the baby,” and the community responded with rapturous support.
The Reddit comments were supportive
“[The woman] should tell her husband to knock it off and stop trying to pressure her into raising his daughter’s baby. If he wants a family member to look after her baby while she works, then he can do it,” one person wrote.
“This is Leah’s baby that she alone chose to have. That doesn’t obligate you to change YOUR life to suit her desires. The whole business of saying you don’t love her because you won’t quit your job to watch her baby is manipulative and messed up, and I’m shocked your husband is siding with her,” another added.
Leah and many women like her are in this situation because, in many places, teachers are underpaid, rent is high, and not all dads pay child support, even those required by law.
Another commenter noted that the baby is much more the father’s responsibility than the stepmother’s, saying ” Leah should consider seeking child support from her ex. Her kid should be getting that money.”
While there are resources to help stepparents connect with their stepchildren and step-grandchildren, it’s important to remember that the responsibility to raise a child ultimately rests with the parents.
This article originally appeared three years ago. It has been updated.
Over the past few years, “estrangement culture” has become a big topic of discussion in therapeutic circles. It explains the increasing normalization of completely cutting off family members and close friends to protect one’s mental health. It’s believed that the growing comfort people have with setting hard boundaries around loved ones has led more people to go no-contact.
A recent study by Talkspace for Mental Health Awareness Month found that 38% of Americans went no-contact with a friend or family member last year, completely cutting off communication with them. The poll showed that there is a huge difference between the generations when it comes to going no-contact. Sixty percent of Gen Zers said they cut off contact with a loved one in the last year, compared to just 50% of Millennials, 38% of Gen Xers, and 20% of Baby Boomers.
The reasons why people are becoming estranged from their loved ones
The biggest reason people gave for cutting off a loved one is lack of respect (36%), followed by mental health (29%), and being “too negative to be around” (27%).
Why is it that so many people are cutting off loved ones? Whitney Goodman, a licensed marriage and family therapist, told NPR that a lot of it has to do with modern technology. “So I have one theory to explain this, and I think that we are so much more connected than we’ve ever been, especially with our family members, using things like social media, texting, email, et cetera, that it’s really difficult to just create distance from your family without setting these hard rules or boundaries with people. You can’t really just, like, move across the country and say, oh, I can’t get home for the holidays,” Goodman said.
Going no-contact is a double-edged sword
Going no-contact with a loved one is a sure-fire way to protect your mental and physical health if the relationship is abusive. However, it can also be a sign of extreme conflict avoidance in a relationship that can be repaired.
When is it right to go no-contact?
“Sometimes, going no contact is the healthiest option when a family member’s behavior is abusive, toxic, or consistently hurtful,” says Mindwell NYC. “If you’ve tried setting boundaries in other ways and the relationship remains harmful, cutting off contact may be necessary for your emotional safety.”
Estranged parents will create petty reasons that their child has gone no contact. I’ve never had a client give shallow or entitled reasons about making the hardest decision they will ever make. A toxic parent needs to appear victimized and will character assassinate their child at all cost to avoid accountability. They can’t not make it to be about petty selfish reasons that just don’t exist. #nocontact
Carla Shuman, Ph.D., says we should give our loved ones a chance to redeem themselves and focus on the positive aspects of the relationship before cutting things off permanently. “Sometimes, family members regret their previous actions. They apologize, ask forgiveness, and attempt to make amends by changing their behavior toward those whom they have hurt. Or they may not realize the extent to which they have hurt you or others. That may seem hard to understand, but I’ve sat with clients whose family members have cut them off. Sometimes they do become much more aware, and they experience incredible remorse and sadness over their actions. If this is the case, or if they are willing to attempt to change, cutting off the relationship may not be the best next step,” Shuman writes at Psychology Today.
The rise in people going no-contact reveals a tricky dichotomy at the heart of our most important relationships when they fracture. If we go no-contact, are we taking the easy way out or protecting ourselves from people who have no desire to change? Conflict is normal in relationships. Is the short-term pain of addressing it worth a lifetime of potential regret?
Bringing life into the world isn’t always as joyous as the media portrays. Several parents come through childbirth with physical, mental, and emotional trauma. But even among the most traumatic deliveries, the birth story of Inés Ramíez, a mother of nine in Mexico, likely catapults to the top of the list of the world’s most traumatic births.
The International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics reveals in a case report originally published in December 2003, that a 40-year-old mother of nine gave herself an emergency cesarean section and lived to tell the tale. This wasn’t a self-inflicted operation to test her fortitude and pain tolerance. This was an act of desperation, utilizing different areas of personal experience to guide her actions.
The mother lived in Oaxaca, a remote mountain town in Mexico without access to a local hospital. After delivering eight previous children, she’s an expert on how childbirth is supposed to go, but during her eighth pregnancy, something went wrong. Labor didn’t progress as it should’ve, and the baby couldn’t descend through the birth canal properly, resulting in a stillbirth.
Living in an extremely rural area with little access to everyday necessities, Ramíez was accustomed to seeing goats slaughtered for food. This knowledge came in handy when she went into labor with her ninth child at home with no other adult around to assist. When her labor stalled, showing the same signs as her previous pregnancy that ended in a stillbirth, the mom became desperate. According to the report she gave the hospital, she knew she had to get the baby out quickly, so she took three shots of hard liquor and cut into her belly. Ramíez’s husband was away deer hunting with no idea what was going on at home.
OBGYN Shannon M. Clark shares the story on her Instagram page explaining how the mother was able to successfully perform her own C-section without dying from blood loss.
“She did a right paramedian incision vertically to gain access to her abdomen, so likely she entered somewhere near the midline between the rectus muscles, and then she cut her uterus in the same direction and delivered the male fetus. She didn’t report a lot of bleeding, but having done these a gajillion times, incisions that are up and down, either right to the side of the belly button, or above it, or below it, actually do not bleed very much because you get right in between those rectus muscles, and you avoid a lot of vessels that way,” Clark explains.
It took her about an hour to complete the emergency surgery. Before passing out, likely from pain and shock, she directed one of her children to get her cousin, who is a local health assistant. The cousin arrived to find the mother still passed out with a gaping wound. Being that the community is so rural, her cousin didn’t have proper sutures, so she used a regular sewing needle and cotton thread to close the mother’s abdomen. The cousin then transported Ramíez in her car to the nearest clinic, 2.5 hours away, to stabilize her before continuing the drive to the hospital, which is eight hours away.
After making it to the hospital, the doctors there were able to perform surgery to make sure nothing was amiss. They repaired her uterus and abdomen 16 hours after she performed her own C-section with a butcher’s knife. The mother healed well, leaving what appears to be a thin scar about six inches long next to her belly button.
People who watched Clark’s video can’t fathom having the strength to do the same thing, with one woman writing, “I’m a nurse and I don’t think I could do this to myself. To someone else, maaaaaybe, but I’m not sure. The nurse who came out and used a needle and thread to sew this lady up was also incredible.”
Another says, “Well, when you’re on pregnancy number 9 you’re pretty much a professional. Whatever brand of liquor she drank should hire her to advertise. Never underestimate the power of love, adrenaline and survival instinct.”
Even doctors are impressed: “I have to say, as an OB I am extremely impressed at how straight and nicely done her abdominal incision was.”
This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.
After a stressful day, it can be soothing for a loved one to stroke your hair as you relax. It’s a sweet gesture that can make the one on the receiving end feel cared for, which is exactly what this dad was attempting to do. But as he finished comforting his wife, he got the shock of a lifetime when another man walked in—her husband.
Tyson Popplestone is a father of three, but he says he’s lucky to have escaped the birth of his last child. The dad recently took to social media to do the popular “put a finger down” challenge about the birth of his youngest. No one could’ve predicted the wild ride the tired dad was going to take everyone on.
The video starts normally enough, with Popplestone explaining that his wife had just given birth to their third child. Giving birth requires a lot of energy, so she asks him to go home and cook up her favorite meal. Everything seems normal up until this point in the challenge. He goes home, cooks the meal, packs it up, and heads back to provide his wife sustenance and support.
Popplestone returns to find his wife asleep in the bed. Instead of waking her, he sets the food down, sits next to her, picks up the fussy baby, and begins stroking his wife’s hair. Clearly, the woman is exhausted because she doesn’t stir, but this is to be expected after such a big event. Plus, the room is completely dark. Perfect conditions for napping.
“You know she’s not going to get much sleep in the next few weeks, so you just let her sleep,” Popplestone says. “But then, your brand-new baby starts to cry, so you pick it up, and then you go over and just sit down next to your wife and stroke her hair for 40 minutes. And then, after 40 minutes, a strange man walks into the room and says, ‘What the hell is going on here?’”
The strange man flips on the light to find Popplestone holding his child and stroking his wife’s hair. When Popplestone realized that he was indeed stroking the hair of someone else’s wife while holding someone else’s baby, all he could do was apologize. He handed the strange baby to the strange man while trying to explain that the hospital must have forgotten to inform him of the room change.
“Tell the part where you explained this to your wife as she has to eat her favorite meal cold. I would be EMOTIONAL haha,” this person laughs.
“This video is impressive because it’s been a pretty long time since I’ve felt such strong secondhand stress from a reel,” another person says.
“I hope that stranger mama, whose hair you stroked, gets to see this and finally believes the wacky “story” her husband has been telling everyone for years and is finally believed! Too good,” someone else adds.
“How would you feel if your 13-year-old daughter came home with a paper saying she couldn’t enter a classroom without a boy escort and would be required to pick up after them every day?”
A seventh-grade class at a middle school was assigned a simulation of ancient Greek society. Students got Greek names, learned to wear Greek clothes, built temples, represented city-states, staged short dramas, and participated in Olympic events. By most measures, an unusually creative history project.
It also required the girls to demonstrate their “secondary position.” They couldn’t enter the classroom without a male escort. They were expected to clean up after the boys each day.
Nico, who goes by @nicorette on TikTok, found out about it when her 13-year-old daughter came home from school and told her it had made her uncomfortable. Nico posted about it, and the video spread.
“How would you feel if your 13-year-old daughter came home with a paper that said they wouldn’t be able to enter a classroom without a boy escort and would be required to pick up after them every day?” she asked. She was clear that she liked a lot of what the project was trying to do, like the Greek names, the costumes, and the intellectual discussions so that just made the subservience requirement harder to explain away. “So why was this even necessary?” she asked.
Middle school students working quietly. Photo credit: Canva
The comments split in predictable directions but a few stood out. One viewer defended the assignment, arguing it could help female students understand how far women’s rights have come and how quickly they can erode. A commenter who identified as a teacher pushed back harder: “I wrote my master’s thesis about classroom simulations. They only work if the power dynamics stay equal among students.” Another drew a sharper comparison: requiring girls to perform submission to boys isn’t meaningfully different from asking Black students to perform submission to white ones.
That last analogy tends to clarify things pretty quickly. The goal of a history simulation is to understand the past, not to rehearse it on the bodies of kids who are still figuring out who they are.
Nico said the school office was closed by the time her daughter got home. She was planning to raise it with administrators the next day.
You can follow Nico at @nicorette on TikTok for more parenting content.
“I was trying to figure out why you were making that face!” This mom trusted her sister to film her labor, but her sister had some “distorted” plans of her own.
Sibling relationships are built on a delicate balance of deep love and the constant urge to mess with one another. Usually, these pranks happen at the dinner table or during holiday gatherings, but for one TikTok creator named Ana, the shenanigans followed her all the way into the delivery room.
Ana, known online as @anaa_dreams, recently shared a video that has left over 15 million viewers in stitches. She had entrusted her sister with the incredibly important task of filming her labor and the first moments of her newborn’s life. It was supposed to be a sentimental keepsake of the most important day of her life. However, as the footage reveals, her sister had a very different “vision” for the project.
It wasn’t until days after the delivery that Ana finally watched the footage, only to realize her sister had used various facial-distortion filters throughout the entire process. Instead of a glowing mom-to-be, the video shows Ana and her partner with unusually wide eyes, flared nostrils, and cartoonish, devilish grins. The emotional high of the couple awaiting their baby was transformed into something that looked more like a cameo from a fantasy film than a hospital room.
The most audacious part of the prank? The sister didn’t stop once the baby arrived. Even the deeply moving moment of the parents holding their newborn for the first time was subjected to the filters, turning a “core memory” into a complete laugh riot.
While some commenters were initially concerned that the sister might have “ruined” the only footage of the birth, Ana was quick to share a follow-up video to set the record straight. It turns out her sister is a “pro-level” prankster who made sure to capture plenty of normal, heartwarming pictures and videos alongside the filtered ones. From the dad getting emotional to Ana doing her makeup before the big moment, the “real” memories were safe.
The follow-up video answered the question everyone was asking: yes, there are normal photos too. The sister had captured the whole thing properly — the emotional moments, the dad’s face when he first held his daughter, Ana doing her makeup before delivery. She’d just also been running a chaos operation on the side the entire time.
The wife reassured her husband that they could have a blonde-haired, blue-eyed baby and that, quite often, a baby’s hair and eye color can change over time.
But the husband “freaked out at this and refused to listen,” the wife wrote in a viral post on Reddit’s AITA page. Instead, he “demanded a paternity test and threatened to divorce me if I didn’t comply, so I did.”
The husband and his family created problems when there wasn’t one
The man was so confident that after the baby was born, he moved into his mother’s house while he awaited the results of the DNA test. The wife stayed home with the baby and was helped through the first few weeks by her sister.
To make things worse, the wife’s mother-in-law began to make threats. “My mother-in-law called and informed me that if the paternity test revealed that the child wasn’t his, she would do anything within her power to make sure that I was ‘taken to the cleaners’ during the divorce,” the mom shared on Reddit.
Finally, three weeks after the child was born, the DNA test results arrived and the husband came home to read them with his wife. “I was on the couch in the living room, so he sat next to me and we started to read the results,” she wrote. “They showed that he was the father and my husband had this shocked, kinda mortified look on his face with his eyes wide as he stared at it.”
The wife said, “I told you so,” and laughed in his face. In the post, the wife also notes she has “zero history” of cheating.
Can two brown-eyed parents have a blue-eyed baby?
Although it is rare for two people with brown eyes and brown hair to have a blue-eyed, blonde-haired baby, it is entirely possible. According to genetics researchers, when both parents have brown eyes, the chance of having a blue-eyed baby is roughly 6%, though this can increase if blue eyes run in either family. And, as the wife noted earlier, a baby’s eye color can change over its first year of life.
If the father had done a quick Google search on the topic, he would have quickly realized that there was a very strong case that he was the father and the drama could have stopped before any damage was done to the marriage.
The support from Reddit users was huge
The positive part of this story is that the wife’s post on Reddit earned her a ton of support from people who thought her husband’s antics were utterly inappropriate. The support probably also helped to put her husband’s wild behavior into perspective while she determined their future. The wife felt bad about laughing at her husband, but most people thought it was appropriate, given her husband’s initial response.
“Not only doesn’t he have a basic grasp of genetics, he threw a tantrum and left you immediately after having the baby to struggle alone for almost a month,” CrystalQueen3000 commented. “He’s lucky all you did was laugh in his face.”
A lot of commenters thought that the woman should leave her husband for accusing her of cheating and leaving her alone with the child.
“Honestly, if my husband left me for weeks after giving birth due to a faint assumption like this, I would be done. I can’t be together with someone who abandoned me when I needed them desperately,” another commenter wrote.
This article originally appeared two years ago. It has been updated.