y sister wouldn’t let me hold her newborn for three weeks, while everyone else got baby cuddles. Then I walked in unannounced, heard Mason screaming alone, and picked him up. The Band-Aid on his thigh was peeling, and the second I lifted the corner, my sister came running, begging me to stop.I can’t have kids.Not “maybe someday.” Not “keep trying.”Just\u2026 can’t.After years of infertility, I stopped letting myself picture a nursery. I stopped pausing in the baby aisle. I stopped saying “when.”So when my little sister got pregnant, I poured everything I had into her. I threw the gender reveal. I bought the crib. The stroller. The tiny duck pajamas that made me tear up in a store aisle like an idiot.
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She hugged me so tight I could barely breathe. “You’re going to be the best aunt ever.”I wanted that to be true more than I wanted almost anything.My sister and I have always been\u2026 complicated.She’s always had a talent for bending reality until it suited her. Little lies as a kid, bigger ones as a teen, and by adulthood, it was just her personality: fragile, dramatic, always the victim, always needing attention.
But I thought a baby would straighten her out.Then Mason was born.And everything flipped like a switch.At the hospital, I stood next to her bed with flowers and food.”He’s perfect,” she said, staring at him like he was a miracle.I smiled, heart pounding. “Can I hold him?”Her grip tightened. Her eyes flicked to my hands like they were dirty.”I washed. I can sanitize again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
y sister wouldn’t let me hold her newborn for three weeks, while everyone else got baby cuddles. Then I walked in unannounced, heard Mason screaming alone, and… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"views":109,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40011"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40013,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40011\/revisions\/40013"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}