Husband Changed The Spelling Of Newborn's Name Without Telling His Wife

Her husband chose not to tell her and she didn’t find out for two months

Finding a name for your child can be quite an undertaking. You and your partner have to go through a bazillion options and eventually agree (or at least come to terms with the fact that mama’s gonna win because, childbirth).

A new mom wrote into “Care and Feeding,” Slate Magazine’s parenting advice column with a story so head-scratchy it will make your skin crawl for her.

In the column, the mom writes that while she was asleep after her emergency C-section, her husband conspired with his mother to change the spelling of their son’s middle name.

“My son is 2 months old, and I just discovered my husband spelled our son’s middle name as “Finlay” instead of “Finley” on all of his legal documentation,” a woman who called herself “Mama Bear” wrote She said she immediately saw red because they’d discussed the spelling of Finley’s middle name before his birth and she’d agreed on it as long as it had an “E.”

Not only did he change it, he knew she’d be pissed so he did the only thing he could think of — he just never told her. “He just let me keep believing for two months that our son’s middle name was spelled Finley when it legally isn’t!” She didn’t discover it until she needed is Social Security card one day and read “Finlay.”

Some of you may be thinking, “who cares, it’s one letter and it’s a middle name,” but hold that thought and really think about the level of deception here. “Apparently his mother guilt-tripped him into doing this while I was asleep after my emergency C-section,” Mama Bear continued. Rut roh, Shaggy. And the mother-in-law did so because she thought Finley with an “a” was “more masculine,” which would be well within her right if the baby was hers. But alas, it is not.

People were understandably upset for this poor mom and did not hold back:

Apparently this isn’t the first run-in Mama Bear had with grandma. “She tried to convince him to give our son a first name that I very much hated, saying that I would “get mad, but get over it,” she continued. Oh to be a fly on the wall the next time she tries to visit her grandson.

Mama Bear admits her husband is “very much also at fault for doing this in the first place and we are working through that together,” but her major issue is with her hubby’s mom. “Do I let my husband approach her about this? Do we approach her together? What should I say? I have no desire to have any sort of relationship with her moving forward, so I am not worried about playing nice,” she said. Nor should she.

Care and Feeding dished out some solid advice, starting with the husband. “I don’t take divorce lightly, and I’m not recommending it on the strength of this one event alone, but a thing like this gets up to a good 65 percent on the Potential Divorce-O-Meter,” they said. “Your husband needs therapy, your mother-in-law needs to kick rocks, and you need to be as angry about this as you feel like being for as long as you feel like being angry about it.”

In case anyone had any doubts about the outcome of the entire ordeal, Mama Bear “will be legally changing my son’s name to the correct spelling.” Do not ever mess with Mama Bear.