Over vacation week we spent one day reconnecting with two girls I hold near and dear to my heart. They were pivotal people in my life after having Ty.
I was just 19 years old when I got pregnant with Ty, and turned 20 six days before I had him. I may not have been "16 and Pregnant", but I think the reason I am compelled to watch that show, is it brings up so many of the same emotions I went through while pregnant and when I first had Ty.
When I found out I was pregnant, I was pretty far along. I was exactly half way through to be exact. I found out I was pregnant on January 2nd, and for three days read up on things, and talked things through with my mom, and Ty's dad, and actually had decided that because his father and I were no longer together (his dad was in California at the time) that I would have an abortion. My mom encouraged me to get an ultrasound before having the abortion to find out how far along I was, and I agreed, and picked a gestational age that I would be okay following through with the abortion. My mom and aunt accompanied me to the ultrasound office, and they turned the sounds off and faced the monitor away so we couldn't see anything.
I should tell you that I was very skinny. I think it would seem somewhat more realistic for me to not know I was pregnant if say, I was heavier, and had a belly, but I was wearing a size 2, jeans zipped up completely fine the day of my ultrasound. I do not remember anything other than the technician saying "You're 20 weeks!" and me asking what it was (because that was so far past my acceptable time frame) and her asking if I really wanted to know.I said yes, she said it's a boy, turned the monitor around so we could see him, and there was Ty, sucking his thumb, moving around, and right there in that moment, my life changed forever. I could see the path in in front of me split, from where I was, and where I now would go.
Within a day or two my stomach started to pop out, and it seemed like I went from normal 19 year old to teen mom over night.
A few months prior to having Ty I got in touch with an agency called Healthy Families. It was this fantastic program for very young moms. I had a worker come to my house once a week (Freddie) and her and I would talk, she would help me with things like insurance and child support. And once Ty was born, she did regular developmental checks to make sure he was doing great, and was on track. Freddie became my biggest advocate, and was someone I relied on heavily.
I will be completely honest here, there was a time after I had Ty, when I was diagnosed with postpartum depression, where I even considered adoption because I felt like I would never be able to provide for Ty the way I should. I wanted to still be young. I wanted to still be selfish about my choices. Through it all Freddie supported me, and talked to me about options and never judged me.
One of the hardest aspects of being a very young mom, is that your friends, as hard as they may try, will just never understand what you are going through. I can not tell you how alone I felt, and how much is hurt to hear my friends tell me about their nights out, or how mad and frustrated I would be when they would call me ten minutes before leaving for the movies to see if I wanted to come. Gone were my days of impromptu movies and late nights. And after a while, they stopped asking altogether, which brought on a whole new batch of emotions, feelings of being left out in all of their forms were so overwhelming. I think these things contributed to postpartum depression, and feeling like I just couldn't do it.
I must say, I am lucky, I did have family support, and even though my friends didn't understand what I was going through, they never intentionally hurt my feelings, and I am still friends with them now, though we are much closer now than we were then. They just did not have the responsibility that I did at the time, and thinking of it now, I may have been the one to pull back from them because quite honestly it just hurt so much to see everything my life was not, and never would be again, through them. It was no longer easy, it was no longer about me, it was no longer full of any possibility, it was no longer free. I held a lot of resentment toward Ty's father, and our relationship was strained because of this.
All of these things I talked in depth to Freddie about. She understood, and she suggested I go to "group". There was a picnic coming up, and it was informal, and she said there would be lots of girls just like me.
I was so hesitant because in my head I pictured bad news girls, who were nothing like me. I was convinced I was nothing like these other girls. If you had to guess one of the girls to get pregnant young, I would not have been one of them. I was in honors classes, I was heavily involved in church, I was a perfectionist, I had a bright and promising future ahead of me. I never thought that it would be me.
Oh boy was I wrong about the other girls in group. I was exactly like a lot of the girls. We were smart, normal, good girls, that had babies really young. I immediately felt a surge of normalcy, a feeling of belonging and that I was not alone. I can not stress how much this meant to me, and how vital that feeling is. To not be alone, and to have other people to talk to, who know exactly what you are going through is so important, especially as a teen mom or young mom.
I started going to group every week. The babies would be in one room and the moms had a full hour to talk about what they were going through, and we could just vent, or cry, or laugh, and ultimately bond together and feel normal.
I connected with so many of these girls, but two of them became more than friends. Those two girls became members in the story of my life, my angels through one of the hardest parts of my journey. We went everywhere together with our babies. There were late nights spent at each others houses, sitting, talking, nursing babies, while my other friends were out at a party, or at college, or on a date, or traveling. These girls made me feel like it was okay to be a mom and still want to be young. The helped me find normalcy in a new, overwhelming world, and they made me love this new direction my life took, even though it was hard. Because of these things, these girls will always be a part of my life. Without them, I am not sure how I would have fared. I would have felt alone, and outcast, insecure and lonely.
Today, although we started out with three babies between the three of us, we now have 10 between us.
When we were together we talked a lot about the differences in raising out first babies, as such young moms, and how we were with our other children. I think one of the similarities we all discussed was never going through that "new mom" stage, the one where you are a complete germ freak and think everything and everyone will break your new baby. That is not to say we were careless with our first borns by any means. I think our parenting styles were more go with the flow. We grew up along side our babies, because we were still so close to babies ourselves.
It has been ten years since we first met, since those girls changed my life, and when we were together the kids were saying "see you in ten more years!"
It was shocking to think that at that point they would be the exact age we were when we met. They would be twenty. They would be starting out their lives.
Thank you Shestin and Catie. I hope you both know how much you helped me during that time. I hope the next ten years does not go by as quickly, and that they are filled with so many more reunions.
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