On the 31st May I experienced the greatest day of my life, I was one of my sisters birthing partners. I was able to witness my beautiful niece come into the world and take her first breath, I also saw my gorgeous sister as the strong, beauty woman she truly is. There will never be another day as magical as watching my little sister bring her daughter into the world.

Me and Charlotte have certainly experienced the pains and joys that sisters go through over the years, born only 13 months apart and different in absolutely every way possible yet still connected by sisterly love. We have very little in common, growing up we managed to fight over everything and I mean everything! Usually why I had taken one of her CDs and left it out to get damaged, or why I had stolen her nail polish. Luckily we have never had the same taste in boys or clothes because I am pretty sure we could have single-handily started World War 3 from our shared bedroom. During our late teens we drifted apart and began living very different lives and although we would have still dropped everything to be there when we needed each other, our time together became limited as it does with most relationships at that age. By our mid-20s we were better at spending quality time together even if it was just to catch up over a cup of tea.

I am the more adventurous unsettled sister whereas she is a homebody, she has a beautiful little home surrounded by family and friends and I spend most my time moving around living out of bags. I have always been the sister who did everything first I moved away from home first, I went travelling, I went to university and got married, whatever problems she was having she could always turns to me for advice knowing I would have some words of wisdom from some past experience.

Then one day during last December I popped in for a brew and a catch up, instantly something just didn’t feel right, she sat me down because she wanted to tell me something. She honestly looked so worried, in my heart I already knew, but she didn’t want to upset me, she’d waited four months to tell me she was pregnant. I have a very good knack of picking man who promise me the world and change their minds from my ex husband to Jamie and unfortunately my want of a child was the beginning of the end for me and Jamie. The truth was I couldn’t have been more happy for Charlotte. She had known the names of her future children from the moment she had held her dolls as babies, if either of us was ever going to have a baby it was always going to be her. As soon as you told me and took off her baggy jumper to reveal her beautifully rounded belly I burst into tears of utter happiness, my baby sister was having a baby of our own we spent an hour chatting about all the clothes we would buy it, what we would teach it, whether or not it would look like her, before I kissed her and her little bean goodbye.

Now I honestly couldn’t have been more happy for anyone on the planet at that time but as I walked away and got in to my car absolute floods of tears came from me, not because my sister was carrying my niece or nephew or even the fact that she was pregnant but because I wasn’t pregnant. I cried all the way home to which Jamie was anything but impressed which turned out to be the end of our relationship. I spent the next five months watching my sisters belly grow, for once I wasn’t the “fat sister” we discovered she was carrying a baby girl inside her. We talked on the phone for hours, went baby clothes shopping and she even ropped me into a breastfeeding class, playing with the knitted boobs kinda made it worthwhile.

About six months into her pregnancy she rang me and asked if I would be a birthing partner with her boyfriend, now me and him don’t always see eye to eye, if I’m honest it is because no one will ever be good enough for her. However I absolutely jumped at the chance to be there and support her after all she’s my little sister and I don’t want her to be in any pain, plus who doesn’t love one born every minute.

On 31 May 2017 at 8 AM on my way to work my sister rang me to tell me it had started, I quickly headed to her house and discovered her on all fours and not in the best of mood, suddenly I was extremely thankful that it wasn’t me that pregnant. We armed ourselves with sweet treats, the sex and the city box set and climbed into bed together. Now my sister is 5’5 against my 6ft and has what can only be described as balls of steel, for the next ten hours I barely heard a peep from her apart from a bit of a grrrs during a few contraction in fact for every episode of sex and the city we watched she slept through the next two. We were curled up with each other for the whole day I have to admit I did sleep through some of it myself before eventually at 6pm she turned around and said she felt the need to push. Now her partner was home as well but he left us alone to bond and  I couldn’t have been more thankful even if I had gone home at this point I would have still been incredibly happy those 10 hours were the closest we have ever been and no words were even spoken.

We bundled her up in the car, my car in fact for the entire journey I was preying that her water would start intact until we got there, and dashed off to the hospital, her water eventually broke at 7pm which was just plain gross but what followed was incredible if not still a little gross. She managed the whole labour drug-free and only used the gas and air maybe four times and I didn’t hear a swear word leave her mouth. Alisa Lily was born at 10.04pm weighing 7lbs 7ozs with a full head of dark hair and is absolutely the most beautiful baby to ever grace the earth. There is absolutely no words for how incredible my sister was, she is so small and strong and has made a tiny human I feel truly honoured not only to have witnessed her giving birth but to have her as my sister I will never look at her the same again I will never see myself as a stronger braver sister she wears that crown now. I’m so excited to watch Alisa grow into a lovely woman and become just like her beautiful mother.