This aunty is now an aunty of 5.
We recently had a new addition to the family, courtesy of my younger brother. Yes the brother who just turned 18.
To say it’s been an adjustment is probably an understatement and in some ways I’m still understanding my feelings around it all. You’re probably wondering why, I mean he’s not the first person to have a baby at 18. And yes he’s not, but my feelings stem from how I found out.
I know many of you saw my posts during my time in Brazil. Amazing holiday by the way. Would highly recommend! It might actually be my best holiday so far, but let me set the scene.
We’ve landed on a Friday morning, picked up by my friend’s husband and driven home. I got a lovely welcome home from dad, went upstairs, got ready for bed and slept.
Saturday morning, came down stairs to see all who was awake and my sister suggests we go for a walk on Sunday, which I was happy to agree to. I go upstairs to my parent’s bedroom and we’re chatting away with my stepmom. I get up to go back to my room and my stepmom says “when you come back down, I want to talk to you”. I’m sorry?? Immediately I sat back down, because what do you mean? You’re not about to have me wait and wonder. Let’s get this out right now.
My sister closes the door and they proceed to tell me I’m an Aunty again. Now I can be gullible, so there were multiple times during this conversation where I had to check if it was a joke. I even did process of elimination to confirm they were joking. Only for them to tell me my younger brother was going to be a dad, and even then I couldn’t take them seriously. But then I thought about it, I hadn’t seen his girlfriend in a while. She didn’t even come to his birthday dinner and when we asked, he said she was sick. Still though, this has to be a joke!
A week later, the baby was born.
I admit I was initially disappointed in him, sad that life was about to go completely different to how I expected, hurt that he wasn’t the one to tell me, which then made me question our relationship. And when the baby came to the house, there was no excitement like there was with my sisters kids. I actually took forever to come downstairs just to meet him. My family thought I was scared to hold him, but the reality was I just couldn’t believe this was real and couldn’t connect. And honestly, I think I’m just starting to connect with him now and sometimes I feel like he senses it.
Life now is still taking some getting used to. Changes I didn’t expect and a new normal that in some ways just doesn’t make sense. He looks just like him though and is such a cute baby. Probably the calmest out of all 5 of them and the one with the most facial expressions. He studies everything and everyone and only really cries when he’s irritable or hungry. And seeing dad with him? The way that man loves him is honestly a beautiful thing to see.
But oh how this wasn’t on my 2026 bingo card. My baby brother you know! Just keeps on surprising me.
Separately though, the kid left school with all Distinctions. Needless to say, PROUD!
I eat cake 