Fifteen and pregnant with my first child! What next?

The year I turned Fifteen I moved in with my real mother. She had given guardianship to my grandmother when I was Fourteen months old. This was new for me. I was loving every minute of it!

Basically I got to do whatever I wanted. My natural mother was an alcoholic, so usually she was at the bars while I was home watching my little brother and sister. Occasionally she would stay home and drink and I could go do as I wished as long as she knew where I was at. I was allowed to have boyfriends. Amazingly enough she actually seemed to approve of it more than most mothers these days would! I was allowed to stay nights with my boyfriends and they were able to visit and stay with me while I was babysitting.

At the end of age fifteen for me I hooked up with a boy that I (very naively) thought I would be with for the rest of my life. We did most everything together. We talked about everything. And, we made a baby together.

When he found out I was pregnant was when everything changed.

I was at my moms and my mother and I had gone to Planned Parenthood because I wanted to find out what was going on. I was tired all the time and sore in places a teenage girl shouldn't be sore in. I was told I was pregnant and given a card for an obstetrician in the area. I then went home and called the babies father. He was extremely excited on the phone. He knew his mother wouldn't have a problem with it. She was also a very liberal woman. But he was afraid of what my mother had to say. It was a tense situation for a few days, but they finally started talking more.

We stayed together for the first five months of my pregnancy and then it was like he wasn't interested any longer. He wouldn't call, acted like he wasn't home when I would call him, and when I finally got a hold of him he would make excuses as to why he couldn't talk right then or why he couldn't come see me. Eventually the relationship ended.

I had Jared when I was Sixteen. After much badgering from most of my family to abort or adopt out. I simply refused both ideas. Abortion is at the bottom of my list in the dictionary and Adoption meant that I wouldn't hold my precious baby at the end of all the pain. My theory was, I made my bed, I lie in it.

There was a period when Jared was about 2 months old that his father and I got back together. He then tried to tell me he was keeping Jared and that I could visit him. So I took him to court and got custody. After that his visits have been a handfull of times and Jared is now ten.

My life since Jared has been chaotic to say the least. It took me until I was 24 years old to graduate high school. Holding a job has been more difficult than not because I can never seem to find that reliable babysitter. My emotional state is not great. I have severe depression. I also admit that there are times that I regret having a child that early in life. I get little to no time for myself and I miss the teen years that I never did get to live.

Learn more about this author, Raigne.
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