Both my sister and I are currently pregnant with our first children and last night we’ve had a fallen out. I was so excited to find out I was pregnant and then 3 months later that my only sister was also pregnant. I was so happy hoping this would bring us closer and my little baby daughter would have a cousin so close in age but we just ended up falling out and now that I’m 4 weeks away from giving birth I don’t need any negativity in my life.
My parents do not have a lot of money, they had 3 children and we lived in a very modest 2 bedroom flat where I shared a room with my sister and my brother had a separate room. My dad developed a depression and he struggled in and out of employment for the past 20 years whilst my mum worked in hospital as a lab technician often taking extra shifts in other hospitals to provide for us. I remember her using her annual leave to work as bank staff (I’m not even sure this was legal – maybe it was back then). It was really hard and I have so much appreciation for what she did for us and seeing how tough life was for my mum, I wanted to have a simple and easy life.
My (younger) sister and I used to be so close when we were growing up but we have started to grow apart in our teens. I feel like our lives couldn’t have been different. Without going into too much detail (I didn’t want to make this post too long) - I’ve always been a really steady going person, doing everything by the book - I went to uni, straight after got a job and pretty much became independent financially. I met my husband, moved in together, went back to uni for a post graduate degree, got married, bought a house etc.
My sister, on the other side – dropped out of uni after her first year (my mum paid off her student loan), she moved in with my parents and went to college that my parents paid for, my mum helped her with the deposit to buy her flat (which was pretty much using most of her savings). She got a job as a teacher and her school offered to pay for her teaching qualifications and after working for nearly 4 years she failed to finish off her course, despite all the encouragement from the headmistress and my mum. She never told my mum but 6 months later at Christmas when we all met she told me in confidence that she never finished her qualifications and the school had to let her go and she was in effect unemployed. She asked me to not to tell parents and I haven’t. I was worried though, I didn’t want this entire burden to of bailing out my sister to be placed on my mum. After all at that point my sister was already 30 and my mum was nearly 60. I hoped she would do the right thing and deal with it like an adult and kept out of it and my mouth shut, but when my mum told me that my sister was getting her flat repossessed because she failed to make payments on her mortgage my mum ended up sorting out all the bills just to prevent the repossession. At this point she didn’t know that my sister was working. Then my sister ended up crashing into another car driving an uninsured car, this meant that not only she had to go to court, was fined the cost of fixing the other car as well as a huge ticket. I don’t really know the details because she never told me but I know that my mum and my auntie ended up lending her the money. I wasn’t able to help at that time as I was just buying my house and needed all the money for the deposit. All of this left me so frustrated, mostly with the pressure that this was putting on my mum who literally sank thousands of pounds sinking money into my sister and never getting any of it back. In the end her flat was repossessed by the bank too. And she has never given any of the money back.
Despite all of this, I was so happy when my sister got pregnant. When I found out I was pregnant told my mum and my sister immediately I just wanted to share this happy news! To be honest, when she got pregnant my mum told me about it first and I waited until she told me personally. By that time I was already 3 months pregnant and she ended up lashing out on me because I had not told her that I already knew she was pregnant. I said I just didn’t want to ruin her surprise and wanted this moment to belong to her. And I only had good intentions to which she said that ‘road to hell is paved with good intentions’. I sort of said I would let it go, she was pregnant and probably hormonal… But 2 weeks ago, I spoke to my cousin and she told me that she my sister got engaged. I was so surprised because she has not told me herself but she was coming over to visit for a weekend for my baby shower. She turned up for my baby shower and the whole weekend she has not mentioned the engagement. On the day, my OH went out to leave us girlies in the house on our own. To start with, my sister didn’t get me or the baby any present and then she asked me at 7pm to drive her to the station because my OH was supposed to drop her off and she had to get a train. Obviously when she said that, all my friends were like oh we’ll leave now, will let you get her to the station. I got so flustered, because I didn’t want my friends to leave, I’ve made such an effort organising it all had cakes, coffee I have even got cakes out so I just ordered her an Uber to get her to the station and paid for it. But she just got all her clothes and bag and said in front of my friends ‘Don’t speak to me, I told you I had to leave at 7pm’ and I just wanted to keep peace so we said goobyes and she left. After she left I just broke down to my friends – about the whole thing – her not telling me about the engagement, her being so mean to me (I’m 8.5 months - pregnant) in front of everyone, not getting me anything for my dd. Just to add - she’s been so disinterested in my baby, when I sent her a 3d picture of the baby and a clip of dd sucking on her thumb, she didn’t even acknowledge it and carried on talking about cutting her grass. It upset me so when I asked the next day if she saw the clip she said literally ‘yes, I have’ nothing more. I can handle anything, but the way she’s so cold, even though she’s pregnant herself towards my child just breaks my heart. Literally it makes me cry.
We do not talk very often anyway, but we haven’t spoken since the baby shower when my mum rang me last night and said that my sister and her partner decided to find out baby gender and they would only tell my mum and his mum and nobody else. She the accused me of telling our dad about her being pregnant (our parents have split up in the last 2 years and because I live in London I only speak to him on the phone occasionally). Basically she saw our dad, I think got confused and said he knew about her pregnancy from me. So she got mad with me. I phoned my dad yesterday and spoke to him and he said he knew about her pregnancy from our auntie, I believe he got confused when he spoke to her – he’s 67 years old and pretty lonely and she never visits him even though they live in a same town. After speaking to him, I texted her and just said that I did not our dad about her pregnancy, our auntie did, she accused me of lying and I said I just spoke to him and he told me he knew from our auntie. I then asked why she always wants to think the worst of me and she blocked me. She blocked me on facebook.
This all happened last night and I hardly slept at all. I’m so upset. It doesn’t help I’m 8.5 months pregnant and very emotional.
I’m so upset, all my life my sister has been so irresponsible, treating my parents really nasty, particularly my mum, telling everyone she had to go to therapy because they ‘forced’ her to study and because of that she was so stressed she failed at school. She never mentions how irresponsible she was driving a car without insurance, losing her flat, losing so much money. I know that she tells her friends that parents never paid her any attention and they were only attentive towards me. I think she might be resentful of me for that reason but she never told me that.
I tried for so many years to be friends with her. She was my bridesmaid at my wedding, I took her to Rome for a weekend away (all flights and hotel paid by me) and I was so excited to hear she was pregnant at the same time. Now I feel like just giving up on her – I feel like I get absolutely nothing out of this. I always wanted us to be close as sisters but it just feels so one-sided and I always find myself walking on eggshells around her.
Disclaimer – sorry for making this a really post but I just found it really therapeutic and emotional as a journey.