About to be an Aunt (and Just Don’t Care)

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Hi everyone. I’m new here and this is my first post, although I have spent a fair amount of time simply “lurking” and reading. Tonight I decided to reach out, since I could use some advice. I am about to be an aunt REALLY soon (within the next 12-16 hours) and I just don’t care. I honestly might be a little resentful. While trying to analyze my feelings tonight, I came to the following conclusions:

1. I am angry and hurt because everyone else in the immediate family from both sides (my parents, sister-in-law’s mother and her brother) got a phone call about the baby coming and went to the hospital. I found out second-hand in a text from my mother while I was at work when she told me I’d need to stop by my brother and SIL’s house to feed and their dogs out on my way home from work. My mother didn’t even tell me the baby was coming; I had to point blank ask if that was why I needed to take care of their dogs.
2. Everyone else is still at the hospital (no baby yet), while I’m stuck taking care of all the pets. I did our family’s livestock chores alone, which took me a solid couple of hours. I was never invited to come to hospital after, and no one sends me any updates unless I call my mother to ask. I feel very excluded.
3. I honestly feel like maybe I’m being excluded since I have the tendency to say the wrong thing at the wrong time and/or because my brother and SIL tolerate me at best. They never ask me to do things with them, come hang out, etc., and basically ignore me unless they need something.
4. In relation to number 4, I feel resentful that I believe they will continue to ignore me unless they need me to be their free babysitter. They don’t have much money, and only ever talk to/call/text me when they need me to take care of their dogs, so I don’t believe their having a child will be any different.
5. My brother is a couple of years younger than I am, and my SIL is about a year younger than I am. I was (admittedly) not happy about their wedding about a year ago, mostly due to being jealous, although I faked it for the occasion. I had always figured I’d be married with a couple of kids by now, but I don’t even have any prospects on the horizon and am rather annoyed that my brother beat me to punch on both counts (getting married and having kids).
6. While I get that my parents are excited since this is their first grandchild, I am annoyed at their behavior towards me. It’s not like they are actually going to be in the delivery room, so there is really no need for them to sit at the hospital until they get to see/hold the baby. Plus, they have my medication from the pharmacy that they picked up and were going to bring home until the heard about the baby coming. My sinus infection is making me miserable and it doesn’t care about waiting for treatment due to a baby.

All in all, I am jealous and resentful, and don’t give a single care about being an aunt. I love the kids I nanny for more than this baby. I’m honestly not sure I want anything to do with this kid. My life shouldn’t have to change just because my brother and SIL had baby fever. I may be acting like someone half my age right now with my attitude, but I am too angry to care at this point. Does anyone have any tips on how I can make myself excited for this and actually want to be an aunt? Thanks.

Not really. They're being sh***y. It's common; my dad's side of the family treated me pretty much the same way when my cousins started having kids (I don't have any siblings).

If it helps any, you're doing an important job. Somebody has to take care of the animals while everyone else is being all excited. I bet THEY thank you.

Give the kid a chance. Yeah, you probably WILL end up being their "free babysitting." Life's just like that. Give the kid a few months (24 to 36 of them, if you want my opinion) to grow and become its own person, and you'll probably like it well enough. He or she is not, after all, his or her parents. I turned out to like my cousins' kids well enough (at least until they turn about 16 and discover drugs and gimme-socialism, then I find myself thinking they're just as disgusting as their parents).

BuyerBeware, thank you for your response. I did some more thinking about this situation (it’s not like I had much else to do laying in bed last night), and you are right on all fronts - from my caring for the animals to probably having to be the free baby/dog sitter from time to time. The animals were very thrilled to see me last night and it’s an important job that somebody had to do. I also agree that my niece (born shortly before 1 AM this morning) is not her parents and I shouldn’t hold her responsible for any “sins” that her parents commit - it’s most definitely not her fault that her parents tend to be self-serving as*holes. All I can really do is give meeting her a chance and hope that some type of bond eventually forms; it’s not going to work if I fake/force it. I think what I mostly needed last night was to vent, and for someone (literally anyone) to acknowledge my feelings, so thank you for doing just that.

In addition to that, I called my brother for an update last night, and he asked why I hadn’t come up like everyone else. I told him I didn’t think I was welcome since no one invited me to come up and no one sent me updates unless I explicitly asked for them. He told me he just assumed that I would know that I was welcome, so I explained to him that isn’t how my brain works and that I assumed it would be rude of me to just show up when I wasn’t actually asked to. He also told me that I didn’t seem to show a lot excitement about being an aunt during the last nine months, so he wasn’t sure I even wanted to be there and didn’t want me to feel obligated to show up if he had asked. I explained to him that I was never really sure what was appropriate to say and ask during the pregnancy, so I just kept my mouth shut. I think there was a lot of communication breakdown during the chaos of last night and the past nine months, and I just ended up being up on the wrong end of it. While my brother and I won’t ever be the best of friends, I am feeling better about the whole situation, and hope things continue to improve.