Hey everyone! I’m 18 years old and my daughter Morgan Brooke was born July 6th!
On Halloween, I found out I was pregnant with a home pregnancy test. I told my boyfriend and he just hugged me. We had been together for a little over a year. For the first few weeks, he acted weird and depressed about it but he eventually got over it and got really excited about it.
Two days later, I turned 18. We didn’t tell our families until Christmas when I was 12 weeks. My family was mad and my boyfriend’s family was excited. He and I were in love so it didn’t matter either way.
All of a sudden, when I was 35 weeks pregnant, he said he was breaking up with me. So I took off my ring and tried to give it back to him and he started crying and said he couldn’t do it. Well, he was seeing another girl. He cheated on me for the last 5 weeks of my pregnancy!
On July 3rd, I started having contractions. I had a doctor appointment that day and she said labor had started but it could be a day or it might be a week. I went to the hospital 3 times before they finally kept me. and on July 6th, which was also his 21st birthday, I had Morgan Brooke at 9:20 AM. She weighed 5 lbs. 7.5 oz and she is beautiful! I went to the hospital Wednesday night and they sent me home, I was still only 1cm. I went back on Thursday night and they said I was only 2 cm then but I could stay for a couple of hours and walk around and see if anything changed. Well after all that walking my contractions stopped! So they sent me home and prescribed me a sleeping pill to help me doze between contractions around 2:00AM Friday morning. By the time we were leaving the pharmacy, I couldn’t walk by myself. He had to help me. I was back at the hospital at about 6:00AM! And I was already 5 cm so of course they kept me. I got some sadol and phenigrine in my IV and that knocked me out. I don’t remember anything about labor. They told the family it would be about another 12 hours before I had the baby but I had her only 3 and a half hours later!
When Morgan was a month old, he finally moved out and we really broke up. I didn’t know he was still with the girl because he told me he wasn’t and he didn’t have a girlfriend. So a little time went by and then he started telling me that he does love me and we started sleeping together again and I still didn’t know about his girl who is away in the Air Force.
Finally someone else told me and I was so mad and hurt. How could he do this if he really loves me? But then apparently she broke up with him and he and I started talking again.
Now he has moved back in and we are doing good. I know it’s crazy to take him back because of all he put me through but I love him so much!
Hey 🙂
Sorry, I ain’t been on in ages, just been really busy. Anyway, me and my boyfriend are still going strong and trying for the baby we so desperately want but as yet, we haven’t had any joy. 🙁 Sad, I know, but were hanging on in there. It’s been about 4 1/2 months we’ve been trying and I’m starting to get really stressed but I know one day, it will happen.
On a happier note, my big sis gave birth to a healthy baby boy Dylon Rhyan. It was one of the most amazing things I have ever witnessed, as I was my sister’s birth partner and his birth touched my heart and made me realize what a miracle having a baby is and makes me want a baby soooo much more.
Anyway got to go wish me luck with the making baby business.
Love ya xxxx
Lots of baby dust to anyone who is trying for a baby right now. I know how stressful it can be.
I’m pregnant. This is my second child, but I’m not sure if I will love him as much as I love my boy Joeangel.
See, I’m not with Joe’s dad. I’m with someone else. But before any of this (getting prego again), I had an abortion, but please, don’t judge me. Ever since my mood, my personality has been different and I notice it myself. I don’t know how to act around my boyfriend (we’re not married).
I need advice.
I was that young girl and over a decade later, if I could just talk to her. If God would allow me to just whisper into her ear and comfort her. To help relieve the agony the dwells inside her bosom and alleviate the disappointment that she felt that she had lain on the doorsteps of her parents and her father’s house.
August, the dead of summer, bounces off of the pavement like a boomerang rounding its turn to come and knock you in the face. A young pregnant girl walks into Wal-Mart 7 months pregnant, with her head down low. With the few dollars that she has in her pocket, she hopes to be in and out before anyone recognized her or the beach ball under her shirt or the lack of a gold band on her left hand. She plows into the store, eager to not make eye contact and blend into the laundry detergent aisle. I was that young girl and over a decade later, if I could just talk to her. If God would allow me to just whisper into her ear and comfort her. To help relieve the agony the dwells inside her bosom and alleviate the disappointment that she felt that she had lain on the doorsteps of her parents and her father’s house.
She sees a girl from high school and immediately turns the other direction and swears she will never return to this store. She walks cautiously not to make her flip-flop do just that flip-flop; afraid that the noise may turn someone’s attention to her. Her head still down and her shoulders hovered parallel to the floor she creeps along careful not to make eye contact. Today, I replay this picture over and over in my mind and remember with much regret that day that I ventured into Wal-Mart. That day as I turned the aisle, I saw a relative that did not recognize me because I had gained so much weight. I saw an old high school “associate” that made cruel remarks to me, and then I saw her. She was the preacher’s wife and she looked at me and then turned the other way, as if I had embarrassed her. With her head down, she promptly walked away. This is the same woman that I had grown up with. I had been a member of her husband’s church since I was in my mother’s womb. My eyes scattered and darted all around and I found myself on the dog food aisle and hoped no one would see me there.
My child, my daughter, now is twelve and the child I was has now turned into something unexpected – a full grown mature adult that watches political debates and attends the PTA. Yet the redemption of my character is not what this story is about. It is about that scared and ashamed little girl of nineteen – pregnant, hot and swollen. Who was left by her boyfriend and then held in contempt by her community. I want now as a whole person, not just broken fragments of the person I was, to talk to her. I was broke in every way that a person could be; broken hearted with broken dreams, and just plain old broke. I want to give her peace. I want her to be able to rest on the knowledge that “this to shall pass,” that old things are made new; that the one that she should look to now, is not the preacher’s wife, but to her comforter – Christ. I want to whisper in her ear that she will make it. I want to reassure her that she will see her daughter grow and eventually, not right away, but eventually; she will become the type of mother that her own mother is proud of.
I want her to know that her path is just beginning and I want to say to her; young lady, have faith and be of good cheer. Stand tall and look that woman in the eye and do not allow yourself to be discarded along with yesterday’s news. You have made a mistake, and now you are paying the price …stand up young lady and let him who is without sin cast the first stone. I want to whisper in her ear and remind her of all the things that her mother told her coming up – you can still be anything that you want to be. You are precious and important in the eyes of God. Do not walk around anymore filled with shame and gloom and despair – rise up young girl and be counted. Remember that you are more precious in the eyes of the only one that matters. Take comfort in him. Do not let this materialistic world dictate to you what is right and fair and just. For there will be a justice and a judgment for all of those that have scorned you, and for all of those who turned their back on you. Their will be an acknowledgement of a job well done, and it will come from the lips of your child, and this gift no one can ever take away.
Take heart, young girl and lift your head from the dirt and towards the sky and remember that God is the lord of grace and love, and his mercy is everlasting. And Lord, if I cannot whisper into her ear, then let me be a voice to every young woman that made a mistake and lives with the enduring stigma of that transgression every day, in the eyes of those who are to love her the most. Give me a voice to call action to the wrongs that go unnoticed everyday. Lord I ask you to keep your promise, and let the weak be strong, let the poor say I am rich because of what you have done. And I say to all women on this road – rise up and be counted. No longer hang your head down in shame. No longer imagine that those around you have never sinned. No longer allow the whims of others to dictate your self worth.
Young Girl ,stand up – arise and be counted
Kristie
Dearest Kristie: The only words that I can say to you Kristie is WOW! You are an amazing writer.
Yes – so many girls and women feel that there is a stigma with their growing belly. As they are rejected not only by the father of the baby, but also society and even family. But we here at the Stand Up Girl website are here to STAND with each and every hurting girl. To help give her the courage through the only One that can give courage. Jesus Christ. The One – the Only.
Thank you for your story. It really touched my heart.
Luv Lisa
I’m not a teenager. I’m not alone. I’m not childless.
I’m in my 30s. I’ve been married for more than 11 years. I have 5 children with my husband. We love having a big family, our marriage is stronger than it’s ever been…but now I’m pregnant again and he does not want another baby.
He’s been very vocal since I was pregnant with #5 (who is almost a year old) that he wants no more children, period. I respected this. I took my pill every day. I’m not sure how this happened, but it did. I suspect it happened around the time I had the flu and nothing was staying down.
Regardless of how it happened, the truth is that it happened. And now he wants me to have an abortion. I told him it’s all fine and dandy until you’re the one thinking about it. It all comes home then, and I just can’t do it.
So, despite not being alone, I am. I am more confused and scared now than I was when I was 19, single and pregnant with my first child. I never would have expected this reaction from my husband. Four of our five were unexpected and it was always OK, he was always supportive.
Now he’s wishing I’d have a miscarriage because he knows I won’t abort. He keeps calling and emailing me to see if I’m bleeding and showing obvious disappointment when I tell him I’m not.
I am so alone.
When Alex was first born, I basically grabbed him out of the nurse’s hands. I didn’t want anyone to take my little son away.
And all he wanted to do was to be near me, to lie near my breast, feeling my warmth, trying to figure out this strange and exciting new world that he had just entered. It was so hard. He now had to breathe, and he had to eat, and he had to poo and pee, and he even had to put up with all those changes in temperature that kept happening all the time. And I could feel that. I could feel what he wanted.
An hour and a half waiting for the doctor to come and stitch me up (great details I know), where I blanked out on gas, and then me coming back to the world of the living and holding my baby again…
He was perfect. He had a perfectly shaped dome head with his long black hair and eyes that could barely see; but when he looked at me, I could see him focus, focus on me, and a complete helplessness and trust was in those grey eyes. He kept on curling his lip, just like I do, when he couldn’t latch on properly, which was often in those first days of life. He kept on screaming, and I had never reacted to anything in my life like I did to those cries.
All I could feel was him, his heartbeat, his warmth, and his love next to my breast. We would just lie there together, against hospital policy but the midwives allowed it anyway, mother and son against each other, not yet used to being two separate entities with two completely separate bodies. Lying next to me was an inseparable part of me, and lying next to him was what used to be his former complete world. He’d lie there listening to my heartbeat, and I could feel him relax, next to me.
My face looked like I had just escaped from Auschwitz, but inside my heart, there was a nirvana. I am excluding all those postnatally depressive thoughts that also quite often occurred to me, and the screaming and the fighting that went on after I went home.
No, that was different. Between the two of us, there was a complete sense of nirvana that nobody and nothing could break.
Time evaporated. Time became the three-hour sleep, eating, nappy change, three-hour sleep, eating, nappy change. How anybody could ever have being interested in anything else in the world was incomprehensible. Time was nirvana, and nirvana was love; there was nothing else that was needed in life but to lie there next to each other and listen to our heartbeats.
I had walked out of the hospital on the third night, and looked out on the world outside, and the cars in the street were still driving, and people were still smiling and talking and going to work and going about their business, and I wondered, I really wondered, how had the world not stopped and become some sort of gentle peaceful happy sleep that revolved around a three-hour clock? It had being raining for three days now, but as far as I and the woman who shared a room with me — a journalist at the ABC and nineteen years older than me, but exactly just as clueless with her child (oh the coincidence of journalism haha! But how would I have known then?) — the world was the monotonous coming and going of midwife staff, the monotonous hum of the air-conditioner, and of course, our little boys. Nobody had bothered to look outside.
I used to touch his long black hair and study every feature of him. I called him myshka-norushka. Sashka. Sanyuta. Shura. Alexander. My mother took to calling him Sanya, probably as a way of taking away the negative image of Alex’s other grandfather in her mind, but I never took to the name. Even these days, he’s only Sanya when he’s in trouble.
I watched his nose because more buttony and more buttony until it was a pointing-up button, and waited everyday for it to change into an elongated, big curvy thing, but it stayed a button. It became and stayed just like mine, a little long, but curving up, and even more buttony!
I looked at the wrinkles around his eyes, just like his, and his mouth, which was just like his, except for when he curled his lip, just like I always do. His fingers had a flat end to them, just like his father, just a tiny little miniature version gripping the middle of my maternity bra, while he suckled and went to sleep, content to be held near my heartbeat and my safety, love and warmth.
Alexander Vladimirovich…Alexander Vladimirovich Mi………….., I used to whisper, listening to the sound escape into the world during all those silent days while he slept and the world had stopped for nirvana. Vladimirovich…I wondered whether that even applied to him anymore. I wondered what in the world I was going to tell him when he grew up…That we were abandoned and left as good as dead? No, no, I couldn’t say that, that would be too cruel. But that question plagued my mind, though it could not break the nirvana, as I looked a little miniature Volodia lying in my arms and continued falling in love, with not just the one in my arms, but as hard as I tried to stop, the other.
My teachers called, asking me whether I was still prepared to return after six weeks, but time did not exist anymore. Of course, I said yes. I was not going to drown in the sorrow and the depression I was facing at the time as well, I would do anything to get out of this house, I was going to prove all those idiots wrong about their prophecies, all of them. I was still angry and my pride was still hurt.
But even that could not break the nirvana. Couldn’t break the peace and the complete oneness with the world, the complete meaning to life, that existed between the two of us.
Whatever happened, I was his mother and he was my son. And I would give my life to protect him. Some day in the future, I would have to let him go, to his friends, to his girlfriends, to wherever he chose to travel when he grew up, and whatever he chose to believe as an adult.
But that time was not now. For now, there was just nirvana.
