‘She was "jealous of my motherhood"’: Coworker becomes ‘obsessed’ with colleague's pregnancy and sneakily attempts to make an ultrasound appointment to find out the gender of her baby, despite the colleague repeatedly declining her ‘help’

Author image for Lana DeGaetano
Lana DeGaetano • "Show me to me please."
Sep 4, 2025 4:00 PM EDT

We all have that one coworker who has the social awareness of a toddler. They pry when their colleagues clearly don't want to share personal information, expect everyone to trust them with their deepest, darkest secrets, then cry "workplace harassment" when everyone decides to stop talking ot them. The coworker in this next story is this archetype on steroids, likely because she is an aspiring mother and is obsessed with her pregnant colleague.

A lot of women's anatomies, unfortunately, are not compatible with carrying a life. This is a sad fact of the world, but in this story's case, it does not excuse the coworker's prying behavior, especially when the pregnant colleague's safety is at risk.

Imagine your coworker calls your doctor and tries to make an appointment for you. Weird. Well, it's even weirder if they demand that your manager give them your home address. Did I mention this coworker is a remote employee? All of this screams "obsessed," and not in the Mariah Carey-I'm better than you way. What would you do if you were in this colleague's situation? Go to HR and demand relocation? Or, stick it out? Scroll below to get all the details.

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  • "Apparently, she called [manager] after talking to me last week and tried to get him to give her information about my doctor and my address."
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • "Should I go to HR about my coworker's invasiveness about my pregnancy?"

    I (31F) am 6 months pregnant. I work for a large company, but on a small team-my manager, three teammates, and myself.
    via montannnaa13
  • One of my teammates (35F) has become more and more intrusive regarding my pregnancy, to the point that both my manager and I feel uncomfortable with the situation.
    via montannnaa13
  • I don't want to escalate it if it's not necessary, as I love my job and don't want to add stress to it or to my life at this point, but my gut is telling me I should do something.
    via montannnaa13
  • Background: my coworker (we'll call her Amanda) is a somewhat new addition to the team. She has been with the company for over a decade, but joined my team about six months ago.
    via montannnaa13
  • While we are on the same team, we work in different cities so we mostly communicate through calls, chats, emails, and online meetings. My role does not require me to travel, but she does come to my city about once a month or once every two months.
    via montannnaa13
  • My husband and I are very private people, and unfortunately my pregnancy is high risk with complication after complication. So, we didn't share the news right away.
    via montannnaa13
  • Once I started to show, there wasn't much we could do to keep it to ourselves though. I was in an online team meeting (where we have to have cameras on) and a coworker in my office walked by and made a comment/gesture about my baby bump, so Amanda found out at that time.
    via montannnaa13
  • She was hurt that she was the last on my team to know. I explained to her that we weren't really telling people, and that the reason she didn't know was just for the mere fact that I hadn't seen her (or I guess she hasn't seen me and my belly) in person yet.
    via montannnaa13
  • Over the next few weeks, she started telling me about how she was dealing with fertility issues. She would go into great detail about the treatments and appointments she was having, the lack of interest her partner showed, and how she was "jealous of my motherhood".
    via montannnaa13
  • I felt bad for her, gave her some links of programs our company offers that deals with family planning, and told her to keep her head up. I didn't ask a lot of questions, but tried to offer support when she brought these topics up.
    via montannnaa13
  • Last week, she called me and asked if we knew the gender of the baby yet. My husband and I do, but are not announcing it until the shower (think a combined gender reveal and baby shower).
    via montannnaa13
  • I've just been telling people that we don't know, that way if I slip a pronoun it doesn't give it away. Amanda then said that we should both take a half day, she would come to my city, "cut me a check" for a 3-D ultrasound, and go with me to find out the gender.
    via montannnaa13
  • This caught me off guard, so I just tried to brush it off with a "oh that's too much, thank you though" but she wouldn't stop. She insisted that since she couldn't have a baby, that she wanted to spoil mine.
    via montannnaa13
  • I told her politely yet firmly, that was not necessary. Ultrasounds are expensive and my husband would be accompanying me to any and all of my appointments.
    via montannnaa13
  • female doctor does ultrasound for a pregnant woman in the hospital
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • We have everything set up with our OB, and we didn't want to go to a third party out of network for additional screenings. She seemed to understand, and asked me to just think about it at least.
    via montannnaa13
  • Well, today my manager called me, and I could tell from his tone something was up. He kind of beat around the bush a bit, and then finally kind of just spit out "I didn't want to ruin your weekend and I wanted some time to sit on this and think, but I need to tell you something about Amanda."
    via montannnaa13
  • Apparently, she called him after talking to me last week and tried to get him to give her information about my doctor and my address.
    via montannnaa13
  • She told him that she was calling around to make an ultrasound appointment to find out the gender, and wanted to make one close to where I live.
    via montannnaa13
  • She told him about our conversation, and that I had told her no, but that it was important to her and she really wanted to do this.
    via montannnaa13
  • He told her that while it seemed like a nice gesture, that he could not and would not give out any of my information, and that if I told her no then she should probably just drop it.
    via montannnaa13
  • He said that she kept pushing for 20 minutes, and he kept saying no, even bringing up company policies about leaders not giving out personal information.
    via montannnaa13
  • He told me that it made him extremely uncomfortable. He said it reminded him of an old movie called "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle" and that she seems obsessed.
    via montannnaa13
  • He said that he isn't encouraging or discouraging me to go to HR, but if I choose to, he is willing to write a statement on their conversation.
    via montannnaa13
  • Amanda has always been a little overbearing, but never to this extent. I don't know if this is just her personality and since we haven't known her that long if we are both just taking it the wrong way.
    via montannnaa13
  • I don't want to cause a ruckus at work, and since we are such a small team I feel like it will impact our dynamic quite a bit.
    via montannnaa13
  • She also works in a completely different state, so I don't know how "real" of a threat she could potentially be.
    via montannnaa13
  • However, with all of the small comments here and there and now this escalation with getting my personal information, I'm getting more uneasy.
    via montannnaa13
  • Is this something I should take to HR? Is this even something they could assist with?
    via montannnaa13

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terrible coworkers workplace-stories work coworkers askreddit reddit story entitled people karma workplace pregnant reddit thread work advice Reddit mom children entitled people
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