Becoming an aunty unlocked a deranged kind of love. It’s a

For a few years my devotion was met with contempt and, if I was lucky, indifference. This only encouraged me

Being an aunty is a deranged kind of love.

When I first became an aunty, I marched into the neonatal intensive care unit (do not do this) and picked up my niece’s tiny body, declaring her the most perfect being in history. A more accurate and objective description may have been “jaundiced rat creature”.

Emily Mulligan is a mum, aunty and occasional writer from Sydney