exhales and stares out the window

Ok

So

My cousin had a baby on Tuesday, apparently

Full term

She claims she didn’t know she was pregnant

She is not heavy set

She has been drinking (for certain) and doing drugs (can’t prove that one but she always has) during that whole pregnancy

Her drinking buddy has been her mom

Who by the way was a major player in the Tea Party movement and is a pro-life MAGA Republican who ran for Congress at the request of the GOP

I

What

The fuck?

That part of the family is claiming the baby is “100% healthy and beautiful” but also, this may surprise you, they have a history of lying about anything and everything and are totally disconnected from reality

Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesus Christ, okay. Fuck.

So it's technically possible that this kid got lucky on that dice roll and has in fact come out just fine, and for their sake I hope that's the case. But it's also extremely possible that they're clinging to denial because the child isn't actively dying and is therefore Fine, Really.

Oh also my cousin who didn’t know she was pregnant said she took Plan B “months ago” and assumed that it ended the pregnancy and I guess I didn’t feel the need to follow up with a pregnancy test or anything to make sure

...There is, uh. Also a third possibility that I hesitate to bring up, because it's really borrowing trouble and kind of assuming a lot of negative things about everyone involved.

But.

Do you know that your cousin was actually pregnant? Like, did anyone aside from her mother see her give birth to this kid?

No

You think they kidnapped a baby or something?

I'm more wondering if there's maybe anyone else in your family who it would be even less appropriate to admit to having a kid.

so. it is possible for someone to be pregnant and not know it, even if they're not heavy-set people. like, sometimes they just don't gain that much baby weight and any weight gain just seems like the normal type of putting on weight. it has happened in my extended family before.

it's very uncommon, but possible

The classic "oh yeah our very young or otherwise scandalous relative definitely didn't give birth, this is her uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh aunt's kid" move.

so personally i would assume it's that thing where "the baby is alive and seems healthy so we assume it's fine"

I mean she supposedly gave birth in a hospital

This was in Montana so I wasn’t there

Yeah, it's probably just the "if nothing immediately terrible happens then it's fine" attitude.

there are some conditions that would not become obvious until the developmental delays become clear

(They used to live here in California but then moved to Montana to get away from all us immoral weirdo liberals”

Also, I guess we can only dispute "healthy". "Beautiful" is subjective and I think everyone's allowed to declare their baby the cutest one.

My aunt has always done the Trump thing of telling us how big and beautiful and great everything she owns is

Long before Trump was even in politics

My guess is that even if the doctor told them "this baby obviously has fetal alcohol syndrome" they were like "well, it's not obvious, so we can just lie about that" with no plan for like. what to do when it does become obvious because the baby is not hitting typical development milestones.

Blame it on vaccines, is my honest guess

Yeah.

I mean, for that to make sense, they would first have to vaccinate this poor child.

Or at least pretend that they had willingly done so, which I'm assuming would do some harm to their reputations in the circles which they bafflingly insist on travelling in.

The doctors did it without their permission, clearly

You think their reason has to make sense?

The baby received a secret vaccine from a neighbor’s 5G phone signal and that’s what happened

Honestly I’m only probably wrong about what excuse they’ll give because whatever they come up will somehow be dumber than anything I could imagine

yeah, these types always find new astounding ways to be stupid beyond anything us regular folk could fathom

cryptic pregnancies are a thing, but plan b had a NUMBER of conditions that it needs to be taken under for it to work, including timing.

but baby may be healthy right now but isn't likely to stay that way