This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Longwood chapter and does not reflect the views of Her Campus.

I write to you from the hospital room where my second niece was born. As I type, the clock hits three. She is now twelve hours old.

She lies in my arms with her eyes closed. Every few minutes, she scrunches in a way that makes me freeze up and check on her. She makes little sounds that I can’t understand, but I talk to her like I can anyway. I show her the view from the hospital room window and point to what she’s “seeing” — though, truly, her eyes are closed and she couldn’t care any less.

I was 16 when my oldest brother and sister-in-law gave me my first niece. In the last three and a half years, that girl has become my best friend. She calls me every few days while I’m at school and we talk about favorite colors and favorite animals. She tells me what she did that day, and she listens while I tell her about mine. She goes to the skating rink with me sometimes, and if she’s not on the ice with me, she’s screaming at the top of her voice from the bleachers nearby. She lies in my bed with me to watch Ms. Rachel, and she sits on my dad’s bed with me to watch hockey.

That baby — toddler — is my best friend.

Today, as I write this, is the day my second niece was born. She was placed in my arms only 11 hours after she was born. For now, she is nothing but a cooing bundle of warmth and sleepiness. In a few years, I’ll be chasing her around just like I chase my first niece now.

There is something so special, I think, about being loved by your nieces. As the only girl in my family aside from my mom, I grew up surrounded by boys. Don’t get me wrong, I love my brothers more than anything in this world, but my nieces have tapped into a part of my heart that I didn’t know existed.

I can’t put into words how much love I have for these girls. I don’t think there’s much that I wouldn’t do for them. The moment those tiny, tiny fingers wrapped around mine for the first time, it was over. I became an entirely different person. It happened three years ago, and it happened twenty minutes ago.

Being an aunt — or “Zizi”, as they call me — has been the greatest thing to ever happen to me. You don’t really notice how bright your life is until there’s a toddler in your ear telling you that her favorite color is blue, but also red, but also pink but also purple. You don’t realize how soft you can be until there’s a baby pressed against you with the hiccups.

I will never be able to tell anyone how much my nieces mean to me. Nothing will ever quite match the level of adoration I have for them, and if I one day do find a way to put it into words, it would only take one more smile or one more laugh from them to make the words worthless.

How Having Nieces Has Changed My Life

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