I Missed the Wedding for My Sick Children—My SIL Made Me Pay

When a woman shared a jaw-dropping family drama online, it hit a nerve with thousands. The poster, a new mom to twin boys in the neonatal unit, skipped her brother’s wedding for what many would consider an obvious reason. But what started as a heartbreaking situation quickly spiraled into a family feud over text messages, expectations, and a shocking demand.

They started their family amid a medical emergency.

“I (29F) and my wife (28F) had our sons six days ago,” the post began. “The pregnancy was complicated, and they had TTTS (Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome), which resulted in them coming early.”

The twins were immediately placed in the Neonatal Unit. “My wife and I practically live there so we can spend time with our boys,” the poster explained.

Her brother’s wedding happened just two days after the birth, but she didn’t go. “I didn’t want to leave my sons or my wife, so I missed the wedding,” she wrote. “Though I sent them their gift from us and a text wishing them a fantastic day and I thought nothing more of it.”

Until a message from her new sister-in-law landed in her inbox.

Then came the text that started it all.

The sister-in-law’s message caught the new mom off guard. “Because my wife and I missed the wedding, she’d need us to send her £140 for our plates of food.”

Confused, the new mom asked if this was some kind of joke. But the SIL doubled down.

“She told me that she got my wife couldn’t go as she had to stay in the hospital but that I wasn’t the one who gave birth, so I could have gone and saved two plates of food from going to waste.” Those words — that she wasn’t the one who gave birth — hit hard.

“I told her she was being ridiculous,” the new mom wrote. “And asked if my brother was aware she was asking his sister for money for food.”

According to the sister-in-law, this wasn’t about family; it was just business.

“She brushed that off and said weddings were expensive, and she had to try and recoup her losses and this should be between us, ‘woman to woman.’”

Things escalated and went public.

“I admit I lost my temper,” the new mom confessed. “I ended up taking screenshots of the conversation and posting them to Facebook.”

Her post lit a fire. “This shocked several people in the family,” she said. “She must have gotten hit with messages, as she told me to take it down, as I was making her look bad and people were taking it out of context and thinking she was some kind of villain.”

Eventually, her brother stepped in. “He told me not to worry about the money that it was stupid to expect us to pay for the plates, though asked me to take the post down, and he’d handle it.”

And she did: “I took down the post when my brother asked me to do so.”

The real hurt was deeper than the money.

In the aftermath, the new mom wasn’t second-guessing the money or the Facebook post; she was thinking about something else entirely.

“My wife is mostly upset by our SIL’s comment about how I wasn’t the one to give birth, as if it makes me less of their mother.” She ended the post with a moment of self-reflection: “Maybe I should have handled it better, but I admit at the time I wasn’t thinking very clearly.”

What do you think of this story? Share your thoughts in the comments below. And before you go, don’t miss the jaw-dropping story of what happened when a woman uncovered her husband’s secret double life, all because of one random Facebook post. You won’t believe how it all unraveled.