When I first found out I was pregnant, I thought the world was ending and decided straight away to have an abortion.
It was in January this year and I was 16 at the time and had been with my boyfriend for a year. Trouble was, I didn’t love him like I used to as he had been violent for about 6 months by then. The first time he laid his hands on me was at his mam’s bonfire night party. Everyone had just left and we were arguing because a girl had told me she had also been seeing him for the first three months of my relationship with him, I didn’t know what to believe so I spoke to him about it and told him I didn’t know what to think. He just lost his temper and we argued. He punched the wall first then he put his hands round my neck and strangled me. I was in shock. Anyway, the violence carried on and got worse and worse, but we stayed together.
One weekend, I was just at home as normal and my mam asked me if I was pregnant. I said no, I couldn’t be. But it took me by surprise and made me think. The following Monday, my boyfriend picked me up from work on the morning it was about half past 9. He spoke to me and he also said he thought I was pregnant and should do a test. So we went to get one. I did the test in the toilet at Tesco but didn’t look at the result till I got back to the car. When I saw those two lines, I burst into tears and couldn’t stop, but my boyfriend smiled. I didn’t understand how he could be happy about it. When I asked him how he felt, he said he didn’t know. I told him I needed to go to my mam so he took me to see her and I couldn’t tell her. I just kept crying but she somehow knew and just said to me you’re pregnant, aren’t you? I just nodded and she started to cry as well. The first thing I said to her when I could manage was I know what i want to do. I want an abortion. We didn’t really get too speak much as she was at work so she told me to just go home. So I did and to be honest, I can’t remember the next two months or so. I just went through life in a depressed haze.
When I eventually went to the doctor’s, I kept changing my mind about if I wanted an abortion or not. Eventually, I agreed to go and see a counsellor and when I did, she told me in detail what a abortion would entail. I made up my mind for good then that I couldn’t do it, especially not at this stage in the pregnancy as now this was a baby, not just an embryo.
It was hard to accept everything going on. My boyfriend was still violent towards me even though he knew I was pregnant. Once, he was grabbing at my stomach saying that thing in there, I don’t want it. He left my stomach bruised and I worried for days if the baby would be OK. I went through a terrible time. I had extremely bad sickness all day and night and was in bed most of the time. It lasted four months. The day came when I had to tell my dad I was pregnant. I couldn’t do it though so my mam did instead and he completely lost it with me. He called me a lot of names and told me I had to move out, which made him and my mam argue because she said that wasn’t going to happen. I had an amazing amount of support from my mam, I was very lucky. I know she was disappointed that it had happened but she supported me and helped me more than I could ever thank her for.
She still is my rock now and has been supportive all the way through even though I know I have been hard to deal with at times. My family is amazing. I have support from everyone except my dad. He still hasn’t come round although he is starting to be a little bit more accepting of the whole thing. Everyone believes that it was meant to be as we had lost 3 close family members in a short space of time: my Grandad (Mam’s dad) died in October 3 years ago, and then 18 months later, my nana (mam’s mam) died in May, then later that year again, in October, my uncle (dad’s brother) died at the age of 34. All of it was sudden. Then I got pregnant and my mam believes that it’s meant to be especially as the baby is due on the 22nd of October, my grandad’s birthday. I think so too and I know that my gorgeous little girl will bring a light into all my family’s lives, not just mine. I hope my dad will start to see it in a different light when the baby does come along (I’m due in two day’s!!) because everyone else is supportive and can’t wait.
My story isn’t tragic or awful but the feelings I felt and sometimes still do, even with all the support, are hard to deal with. The depression is a crushing weight that is really hard to lift off your shoulders and sometimes, I feel like it will smother me altogether. I don’t know why I still get depressed although I believe it may be because of hormones. All in all, teenage pregnancy is something I used to look at in disgust myself but now I’m truly ashamed of the way I judged other girls.
Everyone makes mistakes and we all have to deal with the consequences.
