A Mother at Any Age: Part One
Written by Amanda Torres
I was a teenaged mother. I suppose I am still to be considered such since I conceived my oldest at the age of 16 and delivered him when I was 17 years and 5 months of age. I have had several experiences that show me that the general population would have thought me incapable of raising my son, yet I have proven myself and still have people casting downward glances at me with my children. I want to share my story in hopes of helping young women who end up on the path to teenaged motherhood.
Pre-Pregnancy
I was living with my grandmother and she needed my help. I started working full time at the age of 15 just to get the basics taken care of. My mother didn’t pay child support and the state was only giving $12 a month in food stamps. Up until the day I started working, I was an honor roll student in the honors gifted program. I had my whole life ahead of me and ended up in night school sitting next to adults in their 40’s working toward a GED. I never complained about working from 7:30am-4 and going to school from 6-10pm. It was something I needed to do to survive and I wasn’t about to keep lifesaving medications from my grandmother’s body. I had to grow up very fast in my life, but even as bad as this situation sounds I was safe from abuse.
My Pregnancy
We were on vacation and I hadn’t had my menstrual cycle in nearly a year. I had been on birth control pills for my endometriosis and had gone to my gynecologist several times to find out why I hadn’t had a cycle. It didn’t feel right to go that long. About a week before we were to leave for vacation I stopped taking the pills so I would start a cycle. Just as we got into Miami I bought a home pregnancy test just to make sure. The next morning I sat there staring at 2 lines. I checked the instructions for over a half an hour while my fiancée kept asking if I was okay. I wasn’t. This couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t be pregnant, I had been taking the pill everyday at the same time for 2 years. Sure, I had missed a few early on in those 2 years, but not anywhere near when I would have conceived a baby!
The next day I sat on the examination table of pediatrician’s office. I had to have a blood test and the results would be in later on in the day. The day we were going through all of this was our 3-year anniversary. 3 years of dating and getting to know one another. Here we were, sitting at my grandmother’s house waiting for the call. At 4:07pm that call came in and it wasn’t the nurse calling, it was my doctor. He said he had good news and bad news with a touch of pain behind his words. Of course I asked for the good news first. “You’re not anemic.” He said. After that I don’t know what he said because I handed the phone to my fiancée and just cried. We found out the following week that the 9 month wait was going to be a little shorter. I was already 12 weeks pregnant.
Two months later I dipped into my savings and my fiancée and I found our own place. It was a duplex in the worst part of town, but we could afford it on one income as we were planning for when the baby came. Total we borrowed $100. We paid our deposits; we bought our household supplies and our secondhand furniture. Sure, nothing matched except 2 towels, but it was ours, ours alone. Soon we had a nursery decked out in Looney Toons and blue blankets. We were still helping my grandmother as much as we could and she was helping me by being there with a shoulder and a wonderful listening ear. She gave me beautiful advice and never made me feel terrible for the road I was on. She respected my decision to keep my baby and she was going to be there for me in any way possible. Her love never ceased, only grew with each passing day.
I continued at school, only I was back during the day in an adult program, so I would be “safer”. This program wasn’t going to give me the diploma I was working so hard to get but rather a GED. At this point, I figured I was going to get whatever I could as long as it showed I had earned it. After awhile, I ended up not being able to fit into my desk and had to sit against the wall. Soon, I was doing the whole weeks worth of work and staying home 3-4 days a week with my teacher’s nod. I was about to deliver a baby and wasn’t feeling too well. I needed to focus on bringing my baby into the world. He was due on April 1st, but had to be forcefully evicted via caesarean on April 16th. I was a mother. I was 17 years and 5 months old and I was a mother.
End Of Part One
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