A woman has been called ‘incentive and cruel’ for considering asking for a baby shower gift back, after the mum-to-be suffered a miscarriage.

While she admits even posing the question ‘sounds awful’ she and her husband are weighing up either asking the grieving mum for the gift back, or the $400 it cost.

“It might be a terrible thing to do so I need some advice,” she explained.

“My husband has a long term family friend named Jen. Jen and I aren’t friends at all but we are friendly when we see each other. When Jen had her first kid my husband purchased a fairly expensive item off of her baby shower registry as a gift (around $200-$300 if I recall correctly). I had no issue with the gift or how much he spent, it was a nice item to gift her and we were excited for her to grow her family with her then boyfriend now husband.

“Fast forward a few years, Jen and her husband are high earners (both making over six figures). Jen announced she was pregnant again very early along and sent my husband her baby shower registry with her announcement text which was full of high priced items.

“Personally, I thought this was strange because she should still have most of the items from her first kid and I didn’t think people usually did full blown baby showers/registries after their first. I was also surprised she was asking for gifts when she was still in the first trimester, but I’m a cautious person who didn’t announce my pregnancy until 20 weeks which I know is extreme on the other side. I left it up to my husband what he wanted to do but mentioned to him that I was surprised she was organising another shower/gifting event since she already has a young kid and got brand new stuff then.”

The woman says her husband purchased her a $400 gift from the registry, but tragically just a few weeks later Jen suffered a ‘traumatic’ miscarriage.

“I won’t get into the details but she was devastated and the cause of the loss likely means she won’t be able to carry future pregnancies to term. It’s incredibly sad and while I’m not close with Jen my heart hurt for her.”

But now the woman is wondering what should be done about the expensive gift they purchased for the baby shower.

“It’s been a few months since her loss and my husband is now unsure of how to navigate the gift. It’s not something she can use for her older kid. Asking her to return the gift seems cruel, like adding a chore onto her grief, and it’s probably past the return window anyway.

“I’m also not sure if she’s going to keep trying to have more kids (very risky for the baby and herself) and it seems incredibly insensitive to ask, plus she may not have decided yet. Asking her to pay us back for it also seems very cruel. My husband and I are also decently high earners but $400 is still a lot of money. It’s one thing if she’s able to get a few years of use out of the item, that’s money well spent. But if it’s going to sit in a box in her attic for years … that’s where we are getting stuck.

“So, would we be the a**holes if we asked about getting the gift back? Ideally we could get our money back somehow although it’s probably too late. If we can’t then I’d at least like to gift it to someone else who can use it (I feel awful just saying that but it’s how I feel). However this is such a sensitive subject and we don’t want to pressure her if she’s not ready to discuss it.”

Let us know what you think she should do in the comments below. 

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